A Fistful of Dollars: Lobbying and the Financial Crisis

Deniz Igan

International Monetary Fund

Prachi Mishra International Monetary Fund

Thierry Tressel

International Monetary Fund

Paper presented at the 10th Jacques Polak Annual Research Conference Hosted by the International Monetary Fund Washington, DC─November 5–6, 2009 The views expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) only, and the presence

of them, or of links to them, on the IMF website does not imply that the IMF, its Executive Board, or its management endorses or shares the views expressed in the paper.

1100TTHH JJAACCQQUUEESS PPOOLLAAKK AANNNNUUAALL RREESSEEAARRCCHH CCOONNFFEERREENNCCEE NNOOVVEEMMBBEERR 55--66,, 22000099

A Fistful of Dollars:

Lobbying and the Financial Crisis†

Deniz Igan, Prachi Mishra, and Thierry Tressel

Research Department, IMF‡

October 14, 2009

Abstract

Has lobbying by financial institutions contributed to the financial crisis? This paper uses detailed information on financial institutions’ lobbying and their mortgage lending activities to answer this question. We find that, during 2000-07, lenders lobbying more intensively on specific issues related to mortgage lending (such as consumer protection laws) and securitization (i) originated mortgages with higher loan-to-income ratios, (ii) securitized a faster growing proportion of their loans, and (iii) had faster growing loan portfolios. Ex-post, delinquency rates are higher in areas where lobbying lenders’ mortgage lending grew faster. These lenders also experienced negative abnormal stock returns during key events of the crisis. The findings are robust to (i) falsification tests using information on lobbying activities on financial sector issues unrelated to mortgage lending, (ii) instrumental variables strategies, and (iii) a difference-in-difference approach based on state-level lending laws. These results suggest that lobbying may be linked to lenders expecting special treatments from policymakers, allowing them to engage in riskier lending behavior. JEL Classification Numbers: G21, P16

Keywords: Lobbying, Financial Crises, Mortgage Lending

† We would like to thank Daron Acemoglu, Stijn Claessens, Chris Crowe, Giovanni Dell’Ariccia, Ben Friedman, Aart Kraay, Luc Laeven, Augustin Landier, Rodney Ludema, Steven Ongena, Marcelo Pinheiro, Claudio Raddatz, David Romer, Amit Seru, Antonio Spilimbergo, Francesco Trebbi, and participants at the 2009 NBER Summer Institute, the Center for Analytical Finance (Indian School of Business) 2009 Summer Research Conference in Finance, World Bank Macroeconomics Seminar, and the IMF Research Brown Bag seminar for useful discussions and suggestions. Sumit Aneja, Mattia Landoni, and Lisa Kolovich provided excellent research assistance. Deniz Igan: digan@imf.org; Prachi Mishra: pmishra@imf.org; Thierry Tressel: ttressel@imf.org.

‡ The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy.

2

I. INTRODUCTION

On December 31, 2007, the Wall Street Journal reported that Ameriquest Mortgage and

Countrywide Financial, two of the largest mortgage lenders in the nation, spent $20.5 million

and $8.7 million, respectively, in political donations, campaign contributions, and lobbying

activities from 2002 through 2006.1 The sought outcome, according to the article, was the

defeat of anti-predatory lending legislation. In other words, timely regulatory response that

could have mitigated reckless lending practices and the consequent rise in delinquencies and

foreclosures was shut down by some mortgage lenders. Such anecdotal evidence suggests

that the political influence of the financial industry contributed to the 2007 mortgage crisis,

which, in the fall of 2008, generalized in the worst bout of financial instability since the

Great Depression.2 However, formal analysis of the political economy factors contributing

to the crisis has so far remained scant. 3

This paper is the first study to examine empirically the relationship between lobbying by

financial institutions and mortgage lending in the run-up to the financial crisis. We construct

a unique dataset combining information on mortgage lending activities at the local level and

lobbying by the financial industry in the federal government. By going through individual

lobbying reports, we identify lobbying activities on issues specifically related to rules and

regulations of consumer protection in mortgage lending, underwriting standards, and

securities laws.4

1 Simpson, Glenn, 2008, “Lender Lobbying Blitz Abetted Mortgage Mess,” The Wall Street Journal, December 31; available at http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB119906606162358773.html. See also the Financial Times front page coverage of the Center for Public Integrity study linking subprime originators (a large share of which are now bankrupt) to lobbying efforts to prevent tighter regulations of the subprime market (May 06, 2009, “U.S. banks spent $370 million to fight rules”, May 06, 2009, available at: http://www.ft.com/cfms/s/0/a299a06e-3a9f-11de-8a2d-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1).

2 For a detailed account of the subprime crisis, see Gorton (2008a, 2008b). For a discussion of the mechanisms underlying the various phases of the crisis, see Diamond and Rajan (2009).

3 Mian, Sufi and Trebbi (forthcoming) focus on the congressional voting behavior on key two pieces of legislation in U.S. economic history that shaped the policy responses to the current financial crisis.

4 A sample lobbying report, shown in the appendix Table A2, filed by Bear Stearns and Co. to the Senate for Public Records (SOPR) documents that the company lobbied to change regulations related to mortgage lending standards for the period January-June 2007.

3

The paper focuses on the mortgage lending behavior and performance of financial

institutions. First, we analyze the relationship between lobbying and ex-ante characteristics

of loans originated. We focus on three measures of mortgage lending: loan-to-income ratio

(which we consider as a proxy for lending standards), proportion of loans sold (measuring

recourse to securitization), and mortgage loan growth rates (positively correlated with risk-

taking5). Next, we analyze measures of ex-post performance of lobbying lenders. In

particular, we explore whether delinquency rates at the MSA level – an indicator of loan

quality - are associated with the expansion of lobbying lenders’ market share. We also carry

out an event study during key episodes of the financial crisis to assess whether the stocks of

lobbying lenders performed differently than those of other financial institutions.

Our analysis establishes that financial intermediaries’ lobbying activities on specific issues

are significantly related to both their mortgage lending behavior and their ex-post

performance. We find that, after controlling for unobserved lender and area characteristics as

well as changes over time in the macroeconomic and local conditions, lenders that lobby

more intensively (i) originate mortgages with higher loan-to-income ratios, especially after

2004; (ii) securitize a faster growing proportion of loans originated; and (iii) have faster

growing mortgage loan portfolios. Our analysis of ex-post performance comprises two

pieces of evidence: (i) faster relative growth of mortgage loans by lobbying lenders is

associated with higher ex-post default rates at the MSA level in 2008; and (ii) lobbying

lenders experienced negative abnormal stock returns during the main events of the financial

crisis in 2007 and 2008.

We perform a number of tests to mitigate omitted variables and reverse causality concerns,

and to help interpret the results. First, we conduct falsification tests by exploiting

information about lobbying on financial issues that are unrelated to mortgage lending and

securitization. Next, we adopt instrumental variable strategies using as instruments the lags

of explanatory variables, and the distance between the headquarter of the financial institution

and Washington, D.C., which is exogenous and proxies for the cost of lobbying. Finally, we

5 For an analysis of the correlation between fast credit growth and risk, see Dell’Ariccia and Marquez (2006).

4

adopt a difference-in-difference strategy to test whether the characteristics of mortgage loans

originated by lobbying lenders respond differently to the introduction of anti-predatory

lending laws at the state level, than those originated by other lenders. The main findings are

robust to these alternative identification strategies.

Our findings indicate that lobbying is associated ex-ante with more risk-taking and ex-post

with worse performance. They are consistent with a moral hazard interpretation whereby

lenders engage in risky lending strategies because they expect preferential treatment

associated with lobbying. 6 Such preferential treatment could be a higher probability of being

bailed out, potentially under less stringent conditions, in the event of a financial crisis.

Another source of moral hazard could be “short-termism”, whereby lenders lobby to create a

regulatory environment that allows them exploit short-term gains.7 Such distortions have

been claimed to be related to risk-shifting in financial markets.

Several alternative explanations are also consistent with our results. First, overoptimistic

lenders may lobby more intensively against a tightening of lending laws to exploit expected

profit opportunities because they underestimate the likelihood of adverse events.8 Second,

“bad” lenders could lobby more to mimic “good” lenders and choose riskier lending

strategies ex ante resulting in worse outcomes ex post. Third, lobbying lenders may

specialize in catering to borrowers with lower income levels and originate mortgages that

appear riskier ex ante, with a higher incidence of default in a downturn. In this case, our

findings would not necessarily indicate lower credit standards but capture the specialization

of the lender. However, various tests suggest that these alternative interpretations are less

likely to be valid. These tests consist of the inclusion of lender and time-varying area fixed

6 An extreme version of moral hazard would materialize if the financial industry was, for all practical purposes, setting its own regulations. Another possibility is that some financial institutions have the specific expertise to get markets out of the crisis, which makes any threat of punishment incredible, encouraging risky behavior (Acemoglu, 2009).

7 See, for instance, Bolton, Scheinkman and Xiong (2006) for a theory of optimal executive compensations inducing managers to favor speculative components of stock prices. Calomiris (2008) provides an overview of incentive problems during the housing market boom.

8 See, for instance, Van den Steen (2004) for how overoptimism can emerge in a rational framework.

5

effects; explicit controls for specialization (e.g. whether the lender is subprime, or is

regulated by HUD); falsification tests based on lobbying for financial issues unrelated to

mortgage lending and securitization; instrumental variable estimations; regressions

uncovering a differential effect of lobbying on ex-ante lending standards after 2004, when

important regulatory changes took place; and regressions showing a differential effect of

lobbying on ex-ante lending characteristics and ex-post performance for larger lenders, in

line with “too-big-to-fail” arguments.

The results imply that lending behavior is to some extent affected by politics of special

interest groups. They provide suggestive evidence that the political influence of the financial

industry might have the potential to threaten financial stability.9

The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section II discusses the related literature.

Section III outlines the empirical strategy. Section IV describes the dataset. Section V

presents the results and Section VI concludes.

II. RELATED LITERATURE

Since the pioneering work by Krueger (1974), rent seeking has been identified as a key

activity of economic agents in market economies. Lobbying – broadly defined as a legal

activity aiming at changing existing rules or policies or procuring individual benefits – is a

common form of rent-seeking activity in developed countries.10 Building upon the private-

interest theories of regulation (Stigler, 1971, and Becker, 1983), research on lobbying has

developed into two broad strands: studies that focus on the relationship between lobbying

activities and specific policies (see, for instance, Grossman and Helpman, 1994, Goldberg

9 See Johnson (2009) for a similar view.

10 In developing countries, rent seeking by firms is more often performed through personal connections with politicians providing various private benefits to firm owners (Fisman (2001), Johnson and Mitton (2003), and Faccio and Parsley (2006)), and can materialize through a variety of channels (preferential access to credit, bail-out guarantees, privileged access to licenses, procurement contracts, etc.). Harstad and Svensson (2008) develop a theory of endogenous evolution of corruption and lobbying over the development process: in less developed countries, firms tend to rely on corruption to bend the rules, while, in richer countries, they choose to lobby the government to change the rules.

6

and Maggi, 1999 and Facchini, Mayda, and Mishra, 2008 for the case of trade policy, and

Kroszner and Stratmann, 1998, for financial services) and those that aim to explore the

consequences of rent-seeking activity by special interest groups for firm-specific economic

outcomes (see, for example, Bertrand et al., 2004, and Claessens et al., 2008). Issues specific

to banking and finance have been studied by, among others, Kroszner and Strahan (1999),

who show that special interest theory can explain the design and timing of bank regulation in

the U.S.; and Kwahja and Mian (2005), who find that in Pakistan politically-connected firms

obtain exclusive loans from public banks and have much higher default rates. Our study,

focusing on lobbying and lending behavior, fits more closely in the second strand.

Our paper is also related to the emerging literature on the current crisis. This literature has

characterized the evolution of lending standards, and the potential contribution of distorted

incentives in affecting the supply of credit, but has so far ignored the role of political

economy factors. Mayer, Pence and Sherlund (2009) show that subprime lending grew

extremely fast between 2001 and 2006, and that no-documentation, no down-payment loans

represented a large share of these loans. Mian and Sufi (2008) analyze the contribution of

subprime lending to the expansion of mortgage credit and its impact on default rates, and

show that the expansion in mortgage credit to subprime zip codes and its dissociation from

income growth are closely correlated with the increase in securitization, a finding consistent

with distorted incentives in mortgage lending.11 Keys et al. (2009) provide microeconomic

evidence of moral hazard associated with securitization of high-cost mortgages.

Dell’Ariccia, Igan, and Laeven (2008) provide evidence that areas in which lenders relaxed

lending standards more also experienced larger increases in subprime delinquency rates, and

that the relaxation of lending standards was associated with the recent entry of large lenders.

Mian and Sufi (2009) show that home-equity based borrowing contributed to the credit

boom, and caused higher default rate when home prices deflated after 2006. Finally, there is,

so far, no consensus on whether distortions in compensation contracts contributed to

11 Nadauld and Sherlund (2009) show that, following the SEC’s adoption of rules reducing capital requirements on certain broker dealers in 2004, increased demand for securitized products led to an increase in the supply of poor-quality mortgage loans.

7

excessive risk-taking, with some positive evidence (Agarwal and Wang, 2009, Cheng, Hong,

and Scheinkman, 2009) being matched by negative evidence (Fahlenbrach and Stulz, 2009).

Overall, there remains scarce evidence in the literature on the political economy of the

current financial crisis. Igan and Landoni (2008) study the relationship between anti-

predatory lending laws and campaign contributions and show that contributions increase after

a law comes into effect. Mian, Sufi and Trebbi (forthcoming) focus on the consequences of

financial crisis and show that constituent and special interests theories explain voting on key

bills in 2008. In contrast to these papers, we study the role of political economy factors in

shaping lending standards during the credit boom and their impact on loan outcomes during

the crisis.

III. EMPIRICAL APPROACH

In this section, we first lay out some basic relationships between lenders’ lobbying and

lending to motivate the empirical specification. Next, we describe the empirical strategies

employed in the paper.

A. Lobbying and Loan Characteristics

Framework We consider a simple framework relating lobbying to loan characteristics. A lender among

a set of lenders can lobby to influence the policymaker or to credibly signal information on

the mortgage loan market.

i

n

12 A given contribution level pollobbyingi is chosen by lobbyist

to maximize his welfare, taking the contribution schedules of other lobbyists as given, and

anticipating that the policymaker chooses the policy :

i

pol

i i i ilobbying pol B C lobbying pol pol i

(1)

12 The basic relationships we present are very general and consistent with the two sets of existing theories of lobbying: (i) common agency theories in which lobbying firms compete for influence over a policy by strategically choosing their contribution to politicians (Bernheim and Whinston, 1986, and Grossman and Helpman, 1994) and (ii) information-based theories in which lobbying firms have better information than the policymakers and partly reveal their information by endogenously choosing their lobbying effort (Potters and van Winden, 1992, Lohmann, 1995, Grossman and Helpman, 2001, Chapter 5).

8

where is either a dummy variable equal to 1 or the lobbying expenditures if a firm

lobbies and equal to zero otherwise; the contribution schedules of other lobbyists are

summarized in the vector ; is a vector of lender-specific benefits of

lobbying; is the cost associated with lobbying which we assume to be exogenous and

ilobbying

iC

( )ilobbying pol iB

i

is an error term. 13

In response to lobbying activities of lenders, the policymaker chooses a policy level that

maximizes his welfare.14 In equilibrium, policy depends on lobbying activities of all agents:

iipol lobbying lobbying (2)

We assume that characteristics of mortgage loans originated by lender - including ex-ante

characteristics, such as the loan-to-income ratio and the probability of securitization, as well

as ex-post characteristics, such as delinquency rates– are related to (i) a set of average

borrower characteristics , (ii) lender characteristics , (iii) policies, and (iv) lobbying

expenditures:

i

iZ iX

i i i iloan Z X pol lobbying i (3)

where is a vector of average loan characteristics of lender i , and iloan i is a residual.

Combining with equation (2) leads to the following equation in which lobbying is associated

with both directly (iloan ) and indirectly ( ):

i i i iloan Z X lobbying i (4)

where i is an error term capturing unobserved factors influencing loan characteristics.

Possible interpretations Lobbying could be associated with loan characteristics for several reasons. First, lobbying

could affect loan characteristics directly if lenders lobby the policymaker because they expect

13 For example, a dollar spent on lobbying may be more or less effective in influencing the policymaker depending, for instance, on political connections of CEOs and of board members, on the choice of the lobbyist hired, or on the geographical proximity to Washington, D.C.

14 In the Grossman and Helpman (1994) framework, the welfare of the policymaker is a function of political contributions and of social welfare.

9

preferential treatment – for example, a higher probability of being bailed out in the event of a

financial crisis, or a lower probability of scrutiny by bank supervisors (coefficient in

equations (3) and (5))15. This in turn could lead to moral hazard and induce lenders to

originate loans that would appear riskier ex ante.16 Moreover, assuming all else equal, these

loans would have a higher probability of default ex post.

In another form of preferential treatment, lobbying buys access to policymakers. Such access

could increase lender’s franchise value by enhancing its reputation and providing publicity.

In that case, however, there is little reason to expect lobbying lenders to make riskier loans

and have higher default rates.

Lobbying could also be indirectly associated with loan characteristics through its potential

effect on the regulatory environment (coefficient in equation (4)). Various

interpretations, with different implications for the sign of the relationship between lobbying

and lending, can be captured through this channel.

Lenders that are able to benefit from lax regulations of mortgage lending – possibly

because they are better at screening borrowers – would simultaneously lobby against

bills aiming at tightening lending laws and choose seemingly more lax lending

standards than other lenders. Also, lenders specializing in risky market segments may

lobby to signal their superior information on lending opportunities, thereby

preventing tighter regulation that would limit growth in these segments. In these

stories, lobbying lenders would originate loans that appear to carry more risk, but,

holding other factors constant, these loans would not be expected to underperform

other lenders’ loans ex-post. However, if one assumes that the risky segments are hit

harder by shocks, one could expect to see worse performance of specialized lender

loans.

15 Another cause of moral hazard may be that some lenders have specific expertise needed in time of crisis and lobby to maximize the gains associated with this expertise (Acemoglu, 2009).

16 See Tressel and Verdier (2009) for a model of political connections of banks emphasizing this moral hazard channel.

10

Lenders may also lobby to tighten regulations in order to restrict entry by others, that

is, to prevent competition. Then, one would observe lobbying lenders adopting safer

lending strategies, not riskier ones. Hence, there would be little reason to expect

these loans to be of lower quality ex post.

“Bad” lenders may mimic the lobbying behavior of good lenders to fool the

policymaker or because they have higher probability of being in need of preferential

treatment owing to lower capacity to manage and absorb risk when hit by a shock. In

this case, intensive lobbying activity would be associated with riskier loans ex ante

and worse outcomes ex post.

Lenders lobby to prevent a tightening of lending laws that may reduce the benefits

associated with short-termist strategies emphasizing short-term gains over long-term

profit maximization. Such a moral hazard motivation for lobbying would result in

more risk-taking ex ante and worse performance ex post.

Overoptimistic lenders could lobby to prevent a tightening of lending laws, but,

owing to a genuine and systematic underestimation of default probabilities would

take more risks ex ante and experience higher default rates ex post, holding

everything else equal.

In sum, an association between lobbying behavior and loan characteristics could arise for a

variety of reasons (see text table for a summary). The sign of the estimated coefficient

between lobbying and loan characteristics could, however, help discriminate between some

of these possible interpretations.

ex ante ex post Interpretation Examples

+ + Preferential treatment bail-out, lower scrutiny"Bad" lenders inferior screening, underwriting, knowledge of the state of the worldShort-termist lenders focusing on loan origination feesOveroptimistic lenders underestimate probability of default

+ +/- Specialization in riskier segments subprime borrowers

- - "Good" lenders better screening, underwriting, knowledge of the state of the worldFranchise value access to policymakers to enhance reputation

Expected Signs of the Relationship between Lobbying and Lending

Notes: Ex ante, + (-) denotes lobbying being associated with higher (lower) risk taking. Ex post, + (-) denotes lobbying being associated with worse (better) outcomes.

Sign

11

B. Empirical Specifications

Our empirical strategy consists of alternative specifications based on equation (4). First, we

analyze the relationship between lobbying and the ex-ante characteristics of loans originated

(the loan-to-income ratio; the proportion of loans sold; the growth rate of loans originated).

Second, we explore the relationship between lobbying and ex-post loan outcomes

(delinquency rates; stock returns during the crisis). Endogeneity concerns are addressed

through falsification tests, instrumental variables, and difference-in-difference strategies.

Ex-ante loan characteristics First, we estimate the following panel equation:

imttmtmimtiimt vvZly * (5)

where is a measure of loan characteristics for lender i , in MSA m during year . is a

dummy for lenders that lobby the federal government for specific issues related to consumer

protection in mortgage lending and securitization.

imty t il

17 imtZ denotes a set of control variables at

the lender-MSA level. and mv t denote a set of MSA and year fixed effects respectively.

tmv * captures the effect of all MSA-time varying factors, which are constant across

lenders. The parameter of interest is , which captures time-invariant differences in

mortgage loan characteristics between lenders that lobby and lenders that do not lobby.

Second, we estimate the following panel equation:

1(ln ) *imt it i m t m t imt imty LOBAM s v v Z (6)

where outcome variables are the same as in equation (4), is the logarithm of

the amount of lobbying expenditures by lender during year

1)(ln itLOBAM

1i t is.18 denotes a set of

lender fixed effects which capture the effect of all lender-specific time-invariant loan

characteristics. The preferred specification includes lender, MSA, year effects and

MSA*year interactions; lobbying expenses only change at the lender-year level and there is

LOBAM

17 Note that lobbying activities are at the lender-level and do not vary across MSAs.

18 is assumed to be equal to $1 when a lender does not lobby.

12

little reason to expect a lender’s lobbying at the national level to impact its lending behavior

differently from one MSA to the other, hence lender*year and lender*MSA interactions are

not included. The effect of lobbying on lending behavior is identified based on the within-

lender correlation over time between lobbying expenditures and loan characteristics.

Our main variable capturing ex-ante characteristics is the loan-to-income ratio (LIR)

averaged at the lender-MSA level. This measure is a simplified version of a commonly used

indicator, debt-to-income ratio, to determine whether a borrower qualifies for a mortgage

loan. Lenders usually require that mortgage payments cannot exceed a certain proportion of

the applicant’s income.19 As the maximum proportion allowed increases, the burden of

servicing the loan becomes harder and the default probability potentially increases. We

compute the LIR as a proxy for such limits required by the lender and interpret increases in

this ratio that are not explained by lender and location characteristics or time fixed effects as

a loosening in lending standards.

In addition, we use as alternative dependent variables (i) the proportion of mortgages

securitized and (ii) annual growth rate in the amount of loans originated. Recourse to

securitization is considered to weaken monitoring incentives; hence, a higher proportion of

securitized loans can be associated with lower credit standards (see Keys et al, 2009, for

evidence that securitization leads to less monitoring and worse loan performance). Next, fast

expansion of credit could be associated with lower lending standards due to several reasons.

For example, if there are constraints on training and employing loan officers, increased

number of applications will lead to less time and expertise allocated to each application to

assess their quality (see Berger and Udell, 2004). Or, in a booming economy, increasing

collateral values will increase creditworthiness of intrinsically bad borrowers and, when

collateral values drop during the bust, these borrowers are exposed (see Kiyotaki and Moore,

1997). Alternatively, competitive pressures might force lenders to loosen lending standards

in order to preserve their market shares.

19 See, for instance, Sirota (2003).

13

Ex-post performance

To evaluate ex-post loan performance, we analyze delinquency rates in 2008 and abnormal

stock returns during key events of the financial crisis.

Delinquency rates Our data on delinquency rates are at the MSA level (see Section IV); so we relate this

variable to the growth of lobbying lenders’ market share in the MSA during 2000-06. This

variable measures the expansion of mortgage loans by lobbying lenders relative to the

expansion of such loans by all lenders during the period of interest.20 Specifically, we

estimate the following cross-sectional empirical model:

mmmmm ZXgmshdr 2008, (7)

where is the MSA level delinquency rate as of 2008, 2008,mdr mgmsh is the average annual

growth rate of the total market share of lobbying lenders’ in the MSA over 2000-06, is a

set of MSA characteristics and is a set of mortgage loan characteristics and lender

characteristics averaged at the MSA level. The coefficient of interest

mX

mZ

captures the partial

correlation between delinquency rates and the growth rate of mortgage lending by lobbying

lenders relative to non-lobbying competitors.

Event study In addition, we conduct an event study analysis on stock returns of lobbying lenders

following key dates of the financial crisis. We follow the methodology developed in recent

studies assessing the value of political connections (Fisman, 2001; Faccio, 2005; and Fisman

et al., 2006). Specifically, we perform an event study around dates of major events of the

financial crisis and ask whether lenders who lobbied on the specific issues related to

20 The growth of the market share is equal to the growth of credit by lobbying lenders divided by the total credit in the MSA.

14

mortgage lending and securitization experienced abnormal stock market returns during the

month the event took place. 21

We consider the following empirical specification:

ie i i iR l X (8)

where is the ex-dividend monthly return on firm ’s stock over the event period e , is a

dummy for financial institutions that lobby on the specific issues, is a set of control

variables, and

ieR i il

iX

i is a residual.22 In addition to the simple stock return, we consider two

measures of abnormal returns: (i) the mean-adjusted return, defined as the stock return of

firm adjusted for its mean over 2007-08; (2) the market- and risk-adjusted return defined as

the stock return adjusted for the predicted return based on the CAPM.

i23

We consider major events of the crisis related to the pressure in short-term funding markets

in 2007 and the collapse of major investment banks exposed to subprime products in 2008.

The event dates are: (i) August 1-17, 2007 (ECB injection of overnight liquidity in response

to problems in French and German banks); (ii) December 12, 2007 (coordinated injection of

liquidity by major central banks to address short-term funding market pressures); (iii) March

11-16, 2008 (JP Morgan acquires Bear Stearns after Fed provides $30 billion in non-recourse

funding; Fed expands liquidity provision); and (iv) September 15-16, 2008 (Lehman Brothers

files for bankruptcy while AIG is bailed out).

itieie KRreturnAbnormal

21 There exists a key difference with the approach of these papers that quantify the value of political connections. They conduct the event study around periods of news under the assumption that these news a priori specifically affect politically connected firms only, while other firms should not be directly impacted, and confirm the initial hypothesis. In our case, however, all firms are a priori potentially affected by the market news, but we show that the effect of news on market value varies systematically across financial intermediaries according to lobbying behavior in a direction that is consistent with our hypothesis.

22 Monthly stock returns are computed from the end of the previous month to the end of the month considered.

23 The market- and risk-adjusted return is defined as: _

mtiiit RbaK ia i mtR

where

where and b are firm-specific coefficients estimated over 2007-08, and is the

market return (proxied by the return on the stock market index of banks in the S&P500).

15

Endogeneity A potential problem is that the decision to lobby may be endogenous, in particular, as a result

of omitted variables that are correlated with both loan characteristics and performance and

the decision to lobby. For instance, lobbying lenders may have expanded credit faster in

areas that experienced higher delinquency rates as a result of unobserved characteristics of

their pool of borrowers during the boom period. In addition, there might be reverse causality,

for example, lenders lobby because they originate risky loans under lax regulations and want

to prevent tightening of laws.24

To address these concerns, and help interpret our results, we implement several empirical

strategies, in addition to including fixed effects. First, we use falsification tests based on

lenders’ lobbying on financial sector issues unrelated to those we identified as being crucial

for the mortgage market (see Data Description). These tests provide evidence that lobbying

in general is not a proxy for a higher of lobbying lenders at providing financial services in

general. Second, we adopt an instrumental-variables strategy based on components of the

cost of lobbying that do not directly affect loan characteristics and outcomes. Our instrument

is the distance between a lender’s headquarters and Washington, D.C. combined with other

variables described in section V.25 Third, we apply Generalized Method of Moments (GMM)

using lags of explanatory variables as internal instruments. Finally, we make use of

difference-in-difference estimations exploiting state-level variation in lending laws to

uncover whether the existence of anti-predatory lending laws at the state level have

differential effects on the mortgage lending behavior of financial intermediaries that lobby

relative to those that do not lobby. 26 27 The hypothesis is that lobbying lenders were

24 Some endogeneity concerns are also mitigated by the fact that lending conditions in specific MSAs are unlikely to drive lobbying efforts at the national level.

25 Formally, the exclusion restriction is: , , 0i iE loan C Z X lobbying iC

(continued…)

where is the intrument.

26 Keys et al. (2009) use a similar identification strategy based on state lending laws in their analysis of securitization and monitoring incentives.

27 A potential concern is that state lending legislation efforts are likely to be affected by the financial industry’s overall lobbying activities, however, lobbying at the federal level is less likely to influence any individual

16

originating riskier loans than other lenders in the absence of anti-predatory lending laws.

Therefore, when a law comes into effect at the state level they will tighten their loan terms

more than other lenders to meet the minimum legal requirements.28

We estimate the following difference-in-difference panel equation:

1 1. (ln ) (ln )imt st it it st mt imt

i m t imt

y APL LOBAM LOBAM APL X Z

s v

(10)

stAPL is a dummy equal to one if there exists an anti-predatory lending law in state s , where

MSA is located, at time .m t 29 denotes a set of MSA-year varying controls. In

regressions without lender fixed effects, the treatment group includes all lenders located in

states without anti-predatory lending laws. In regressions with lender fixed effects, the

control group includes the branches and subsidiaries of the same lender located in states that

have not yet implemented anti-predatory lending laws and the treatment group comprises

those that are located in states that have already implemented such laws. Hence, the control

and treated groups are a priori very similar among many dimensions, including

organizational and technological efficiency.

mtX

IV. DATA DESCRIPTION

A. Mortgage Lending

Mortgage lenders are required to provide detailed information on the applications they

receive and the loans they originate under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA).

Enacted by Congress in 1975, HMDA data covers a broad set of depository and no

depository financial institutions. Comparisons of the total amount of loan originations in the

HMDA and industry sources indicate that around 90 percent of the mortgage lending activity

state’s decision to pass a law. Moreover, what we are interested in is the differential response of lobbying versus non-lobbying lenders to the regulatory changes once a law comes into effect.

28 Keys et al. (2009) use a similar identification strategy based on state lending laws in their analysis of securitization and monitoring incentives.

29 In some cases, a single MSA contains areas in several states. Then we assume that the MSA has a law in place if any one of the states do.

17

is covered by the loan application registry. Our coverage of HMDA data is between 1999-

2007 to match the lobbying database.

We collapse the data to MSA-lender level with 378 MSAs and almost 9000 lenders. Then,

we construct our variables of interest: loan-to-income ratio at origination, loan securitization

rates, mortgage loan growth rate, and the extent of lending activity by lobbying lenders at the

MSA level.

B. Lobbying

Lobbyists in the U.S. - often organized in special interest groups - can legally influence the

policy formation process through two main channels. First, they can offer campaign finance

contributions, in particular through political action committees (PACs). These activities have

received a fair amount of attention in the literature. 30 Second, they are allowed to carry out

lobbying activities in the executive and legislative branches of the federal government.

These lobbying activities, albeit accounting for about 90 percent of lobbyists’ expenditures

(Table 1a), have in contrast received scant attention in the literature. Individual companies

and organizations have been required to provide a substantial amount of information on their

lobbying activities starting with the introduction of the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995.

Since 1996, all lobbyists (intermediaries who lobby on behalf of companies and

organizations) have to file semi-annual reports to the Secretary of the Senate’s Office of

Public Records (SOPR), listing the name of each client (firm), the total income they have

received from each of them, and specific lobbying issues. In parallel, all firms with in-house

lobbying departments are required to file similar reports stating the total dollar amount they

have spent (either in-house or in payments to external lobbyists). Legislation requires the

disclosure not only of the dollar amounts actually received/spent, but also of the issues for

which lobbying is carried out. Thus, unlike PAC contributions, lobbying expenditures of

companies can be associated with very specific targeted policy areas. Finally, the reports

must also state which chamber of Congress and which executive departments or agencies

30 See, for instance, Snyder, 1990, Goldberg and Maggi, 1999, Gawande and Bandyopadhyay, 2000.

18

were contacted. Such detailed information is reported by roughly 9000 companies, around

600 of which are in the finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE) industry.

C. Other Data

We supplement the information from the lobbying and HMDA databases with MSA-level

and state-level data on economic and social indicators such as income, unemployment,

population, and house price appreciation.31 We also obtain data on delinquent loans from

LoanPerformance, a private data company. The stock price return is computed using data

from Compustat. Finally, information on the enactment of anti-predatory lending laws is

from Bostic et al (2008). 32

D. Construction of the Regressions Dataset

Matching Lobbying Firms to Lenders

The matching of the lobbying and HMDA databases is a tedious task that was performed in

several steps (see Appendix). We use an algorithm that finds potential matches in HMDA of

lenders in the lobbying database by searching for common words in the name strings. After

the algorithm narrows down the potential matches of lobbying firms among the HMDA

lenders, we go through the list one by one to determine the right match. Finally, we examine

meticulously the corporate structure of the firms that appear in the lobbying database and that

might be matched to particular HMDA lenders based on our algorithm. We create four

lobbying identifiers reflecting several types of matches: (i) exact matches; (ii) matches to

31 Data sources include the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the Census Bureau, and the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO).

32 North Carolina was the first state to pass an anti-predatory lending law in 1999 and other states followed suit. By 2007, all but six states have some form of anti-predatory lending law in place. The following states, with the date of passage in parantheses, have laws that use triggers to define a class of loans eligible for restrictions and disclosures, following the lead of Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act at the federal level: Arkansas (2003), California (2002), Colorado (2003), Connecticut (2001), Florida (2002), Georgia (2002), Illinois (2004), Indiana (2004), Kentucky (2003), Maine (2003), Maryland (2002), Massachusetts (2001), Nevada (2003), New Jersey (2003), New Mexico (2004), New York (2003), Ohio (2002), Oklahoma (2004), Pennsylvania (2001), South Carolina (2004), Texas (2001), Utah (2004), Washington, D.C. (2003), and Wisconsin (2004). Other states have laws that are more general in scope in the sense that they do not focus on high-cost or subprime loans and do not use triggers. These include Idaho, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oregon, Tennessee, Washington, and West Virginia.

19

parent firm; (iii) matches to affiliated firms; and (iv) matches to subsidiaries. The lobbying

variables used in the regressions combines these four variables.33

Identifying Lobbying Activity Targeted to the Mortgage Market

For identification purposes, it is important to distinguish between lobbying activities that are

related to mortgage-market-specific issues from other lobbying activities. We first

concentrate only on issues related to the five general issues of interest (accounting, banking,

bankruptcy, housing, and financial institutions) and then gather information on the specific

issues, which are typically acts proposed at the House or the Senate, that were listed by the

lobbyists as the main issue for the lobbying activity.34 Then, we go through these specific

issues one by one and determine whether an issue can be directly linked to restrictions on

mortgage market lending. For example, H.R. 1163 of 2003 (Predatory Mortgage Lending

Practices Reduction Act) and H.R. 4471 of 2005 (Fair and Responsible Lending Act),

regulating high cost mortgages, are bills that we deem to be relevant to mortgage market

lending. On the other hand, H.R. 2201 of 2005 (Consumer Debt Prevention and Education

Act) and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, although in general related to financial services,

do not include any provisions directly related to mortgage lending and are not classified as

mortgage-market-specific issues. After classifying all listed issues, we split the total

lobbying expenditure by a lender into lobbying expenditure on specific and non-specific

issues. In order to estimate lobbying expenditures associated with specific issues, we split

lobbying expenditures evenly across issues. To be more specific, we first divide the total

lobbying expenditure by the number of all general issues and multiply by the number of

33 We also consider lobbying expenditures by associations (which are small compared to lobbying by individual lenders). A portion of the associations’ lobbying expenditures is assigned to each member firm based on the share of its own spending in the total of all members. Augmenting the lobbying variable with these expenditures does not change the results.

34 ‘General issue area codes’ are provided by the SOPR and listed in line 15 while the ‘specific lobbying issues’ are listed in line 16 of the lobbying reports. See Appendix for more details on what the reports look like and a full list of general issues as well as that of specific issues selected for the analysis.

20

general issues selected. Then, we divide this by the total number of specific issues listed

under the five general issues and multiply by the number of specific issues of interest.35

E. Summary Statistics

As shown in Table 1a, between 1999 and 2006, interest groups have spent on average about

$4.2 billion per political cycle on targeted political activity, which includes PAC campaign

contributions and lobbying expenditures. Lobbying expenditures represent by far the bulk of

all interest groups’ money spent on targeted political activity (close to 90 percent).

Expenditures by FIRE companies constitute roughly 15 percent of overall lobbying

expenditures in any election cycle. Approximately 10 percent of all firms that lobbied during

this time period were associated with FIRE.

Lobbying in the FIRE industry seems to be more prominent than it is in other industries.

Figure 1 shows data on lobbying intensity (defined as lobbying expenditures per firm) by

sector. Firms lobbying in the FIRE industry spent approximately $479,500 per firm in 2006

compared to $300,273 per firm in defense or $200,187 per firm in construction. Moreover,

as shown in Figure 2, the lobbying intensity for FIRE increased at a much faster pace relative

to the average lobbying intensity over 1999–2006. Finally, Table 1b shows that lobbying by

financial intermediaries on issues related to mortgage lending and securitization totaled $475

million during 1999-2006, of which $161 million was spent in 2005 and 2006 alone.

Lobbying expenditures by lenders’ associations remained comparatively small ($76 million

during 1999-2006).

Similar inspection of the HMDA database reveals time trends indicating higher LIR and

increased recourse to securitization (Figures 3 and 4). Our matching process ends up

matching around 250 firms in the lobbying database to one or more lenders in the HMDA

database, corresponding to roughly 40 percent of FIRE firms that lobby and 3 percent of

HMDA lenders. In the final MSA-lender level dataset we use in the empirical analysis, the

35 For robustness, we adopt an alternative splitting approach that distributes expenditures using as weights the proportion of reports that mention the specific issues of interest. The results remain the same.

21

lenders that lobby comprise around 13 percent of the observations, reflecting the fact that

lobbying lenders tend to be larger and/or more geographically diverse than those that do not

lobby. In 2006, roughly 13 percent of lender-MSA pairs lobbied; and about 9 percent

lobbied on regulations related to mortgage lending and securitization. Summary statistics on

the variables used in the empirical analysis and the match rates are shown in Table 2. As a

first impression, the only significant difference between lobbying lenders and the other

lenders is that the former are typically much larger (in terms of assets) than the latter.

V. RESULTS

A. Empirical Analysis of Loan-to-Income Ratio

Table 3 presents the fixed-effects regression results based on equation (5) of the LIR of

originated loans on a dummy variable for lenders lobbying on specific issues. The

coefficient on this dummy variable is positive and statistically significant at the 1 percent

level in all regressions. Loans originated by lenders lobbying on specific issues have higher

LIR on average. This finding remains unaffected when controlling for observable MSA

(column (2)) and lender-MSA characteristics (column (3)). Lender-MSA level control

variables ensure that the estimated coefficient on the dummy for lobbying lenders does not

reflect characteristics such as the size of the lender (proxied by log of assets), the market

power of the lender in a particular MSA (proxied by its market share), or other factors

proxying for observable and unobservable characteristics of a lender’s pool of applicants

such as (i) whether the lender focuses on community development mortgages or has a

brokerage-type business model (proxied by a dummy for HUD-regulated lenders), (ii)

whether the lender specializes in subprime lending, and (iii) the average income of applicants

of loans originated by the lender in a particular MSA. Moreover, the size of the coefficient

increases as control variables are added to the regression suggesting that omitted variables at

the MSA level and at the lender-MSA level may have resulted in attenuation bias.36

Adding MSA, year, and cross MSA-year fixed effects does not affect the magnitude or the

significance of the estimated coefficients (columns (4) to (7)). This set of fixed effects

36 Standard errors are robust to heteroskedasticity and clustered at the lender-MSA level to correct for serial correlation.

22

confirm that our results do not reflect unobserved, either time-invariant or time-varying MSA

characteristics, or time effects common to all MSAs. Importantly, MSA-year interactions in

column (6) guarantee that the estimated effect is not biased due to, for example, the average

quality of the pool of applicants at the MSA level.

The magnitude of the effect is not trivial. The estimated coefficient of 0.14 implies that the

average LIR of mortgages originated is about 0.14 points higher for lobbying lenders than for

other lenders. This is about 7 percent of the average LIR of 1.97 in the complete sample.

Table 4 reports regressions of LIR on lobbying expenditures. The coefficient on the

lobbying amount is positive and significant at a 1 percent level for various sets of fixed

effects and control variables. The advantage of using the level of lobbying expenditures

relative to the dummy in Table 3 is that the time variation in lobbying amounts allows us to

introduce lender fixed effects, and therefore to identify the coefficient of interest on the

within dimension, in contrast to the results of Table 3 in which the coefficient of interest

reflects systematic differences between firms. In specifications including lender fixed effects

(columns (3) to (5)), the coefficient of interest therefore reflects a correlation over time

between the LIR and the lobbying amounts for lobbying lenders only. Hence, any time-

invariant lender-specific factors – such as a superior screening technology -affecting both the

decision to lobby and lending standards are absorbed by the lender fixed effects. Another

source of concern is that there may be shocks common to all lenders and we address this

concern by introducing time dummies. Columns (2) to (5) show that the coefficient remains

significant. Furthermore, columns (4) and (5) include MSA*year interactions controlling for

time-varying local conditions faced by lenders.37

37 We conduct further robustness tests on clustering, exclusion of outliers, alternative split of total expenditures into specific and non-specific issues, using lobbying expenditures scaled by assets, taking into account lobbying expenditures by bankers’ associations and an alternative measure of lobbying expenditures, which are scaled by the importance of the law and regulations for which the firm lobbies, giving higher weight to lobbying for laws which appear more often in the lobbying reports. The main result that higher lobbying activity is associated with higher LIR remains unaltered (see Table A4 in the Appendix).

23

The range of estimated coefficient suggests that a one standard deviation rise in lobbying

expenditures is associated with a 0.02-0.11 points rise in LIR. This constitutes 1-5 percent of

the average LIR of 1.97 in the complete sample.38

B. Falsification Tests

The estimated relationship between LIR and the lobbying decision may capture omitted

factors that affect both the decision to lobby and the characteristics of loans originated. If the

results are driven by omitted factors affecting the decision to lobby on financial sector issues

in general, we would expect to obtain a similar result for lenders that lobby on financial

sector issues that are unrelated to mortgage lending. To carry out the falsification exercise,

we create a dummy variable for lenders lobbying on issues that are not related to mortgage

lending and securitization, e.g., consumer credit and security of personal information,

financial services other than mortgage lending, deposit insurance, anti-money laundering, etc.

We repeat the regressions presented in Table 3 by adding the new dummy. Table 5 displays

the results. We find that the dummy for lobbying on specific issues has a positive and

significant coefficient while the dummy for lobbying on other issues has a negative and

significant sign. These falsification tests further support the interpretation that the

relationship between lobbying and mortgage lending behavior is not coincidental and is

unlikely to be driven by omitted characteristics.

C. Instrumental Variable Regressions and GMM

To further address endogeneity concerns, we develop an instrumental variable strategy. As

discussed earlier, the concern is that lobbying on issues specific to mortgage lending may be

correlated with unobserved lender-time or lender-MSA-time varying loan characteristics,

which could bias our estimates. The within lender estimations reported in Table 4 partially

address endogeneity bias, but only if the unobserved lender characteristics do not vary over

time.

LOBAM

1.0*)/ln(*ln* 211

38 For a 10 percent increase in , the outcome variable changes by

imtimtimtimt LOBAMLOBAMLOBAMddy .

24

To address the identification issue in the regressions with lender fixed effects, we need an

instrument that is both lender-specific and time-varying. The instrument we consider is a

proxy for the cost of lobbying, which is likely to be cross-sectionally correlated with

lobbying and can arguably be assumed not to affect lending other than through lobbying.

First, we construct the lender-specific component. A number of papers have shown that

distance affects financial decisions both within countries (Petersen and Rajan, 1995), and

across countries (Mian, 2006). Following this literature, we hypothesize that the cost of

lobbying is a decreasing function of the distance between the headquarter of a financial

institution and Washington, D.C., and consider this distance as the first exogenous

component of the cost of lobbying. Second, a time-varying component of the cost of

lobbying is given by the rest of the world purchases of U.S. Treasury securities from the

Flow of Funds Accounts published by the Federal Reserve. The idea underlying the

instrument is that when capital inflows are high, the cost of capital is low, and therefore

lobbying becomes relatively cheaper. For this reason, we expect a positive correlation

between capital inflows and lobbying in the time series. Importantly, we expect neither the

lender-specific nor the time-varying component of the instrument to be correlated with the

unobservable determinants of lending.39 We multiply these two variables to obtain an

instrument that is both lender-specific and time-varying.

Whether the instrument is positively or negatively correlated with the variable instrumented

is unclear in theory. The correlation may reflect the positive time-series relationship between

lobbying expenditures and capital inflows. But cross-sectional factors may also affect this

correlation. Indeed, when the cost of capital falls, financial institutions closer to Washington,

D.C. may expand lobbying more if there is complementarity between these two exogenous

components of the cost of lobbying, which would result in a negative cross-sectional

correlation between the instrument and the endogenous variable. Instead, if there is

substitutability, lower cost of capital may disproportionately stimulate the lobbying efforts of

39 In recent years, a majority of foreign purchases of new issues of U.S. Treasury securities were central banks, with motives a priori unrelated to the characteristics of the U.S. mortgage market. The distance to Washington, D.C. is also strongly pre-determined and unrelated to developments in the U.S. mortgage market in recent years.

25

institutions farther from Washington, D.C., resulting in a positive cross-sectional correlation

between the instrument and the variable instrumented. Empirically, we find a positive

relationship between the instrument and the endogenous variable.

Table 6a shows that the coefficient on lobbying expenditures remains highly significant in

the second stage of the two-stage least squares regression when it is instrumented. However,

the size of the coefficient increases dramatically which suggests that, indeed, the OLS

estimate is biased downward. Table 6b reports the first stage and suggests that the

instrument is strong. The first-stage F-statistic is very high, with the p-value for the test of

significance of excluded instruments equal to 0.

Table 7 reports the results from system GMM estimations. Lagged levels of lobbying

expenditures (in addition to the external instrument in Table 6) are used as instruments in the

difference equation whereas lagged differences are used in the level equations. Columns (1)-

(5) implement the system GMM using alternative number of lags as instruments. The results

support the finding that increase in lobbying expenses are associated with higher LIR. The

estimated coefficient is statistically significant at the one percent level in all the

specifications. The magnitude of the coefficient is higher than in Table 4, suggesting a

negative correlation between the unobserved component of LIR and lobbying expenses in the

OLS. Importantly, in all specifications, the Hansen’s test for overidentifying restrictions

passes at the one percent significance level and the null hypothesis of no two-period serial

correlation in the residuals cannot be rejected.

D. Difference-in-Difference Estimations

We exploit the state-level and time-level variation in the existence of anti-predatory lending

laws to uncover whether laws being in place have a differential effect on the mortgage

lending behavior of lobbying lenders relative to those that do not lobby. As shown in Table

8, the coefficient on the interaction term between the dummy for an anti-predatory lending

law and lobbying intensity is negative and significant at the 1 percent level in columns (2)-

(4). This result is consistent with the hypothesis that lobbying lenders, at the margin, raise

their lending standards more than other lenders, when anti-predatory lending laws are in

26

place, according to the general formulation of equation (7). The result is robust to including

lender, MSA and year fixed effects, and when we control for MSA-time, lender-time or

lender-MSA-time level observable characteristics. In addition, the overall effect of an anti-

predatory lending law being in place, evaluated at the average lobbying expenditures in the

sample is (ln ) 0LOBAM . This suggests that LIR is lower in MSAs that belong to

states with anti-predatory lending laws in place.

E. Evidence on Lobbying and Securitization and Mortgage Loans Growth

As discussed in Section III, the proportion of mortgage loans that are securitized is another

potentially important indicator of the quality of mortgages originated by financial

institutions. Table 9 shows that the proportion of mortgage loans securitized is positively

correlated with lobbying expenditures within lenders. The result is robust to the inclusion of

lender, MSA and year fixed effects and MSA*year interactions. In columns (4)-(6), we also

show that the results are robust to instrumenting the lobbying variable.

A fast expansion of mortgage credit could also be associated with lower lending standards for

reasons discussed in Section III. Table 10 shows that lobbying is positively correlated with

the growth of mortgage loans. This result is significant at the 1 percent level in both the

fixed effects and IV specifications, suggesting that lobbying lenders, through faster

expansion of their mortgage loan portfolios, tend to lend more aggressively and potentially

take bigger risks.

F. Lobbying and Delinquency Rates

So far, the evidence suggests that there exists a strong link between lobbying on issues

related to mortgage lending and the characteristics of loans originated. In this section, we

analyze the relationship between the relative growth of mortgage loans of lenders who lobby

on the specific issues we identified and the ex-post average delinquency rate at the MSA

27

level as of 2008, based on specification (7).40 We follow a conservative approach by

clustering the error terms at the state level.

Regression results reported in Tables 11a and 11b show that delinquency rates in 2008 are

significantly higher in MSAs in which mortgage lending by lobbying lenders has expanded

relatively faster than mortgage lending by other lenders. This result is robust to (i) the

inclusion of various MSA-level characteristics, including characteristics of the mortgage

lending market such as the share of subprime loans and the number of lenders, (ii) the

inclusion of state fixed effects to control for state-specific unobserved factors, and (iii) the

exclusion of states in which the housing boom-bust cycle was more severe (California,

Florida and Nevada) to ensure that mortgage market outcomes of these three states are not

driving the results. The estimated effect is economically significant: a one standard deviation

increase in the relative growth of mortgage loans of lobbying lenders is associated with

almost a 1 percentage point increase in the delinquency rate.

To address endogeneity concerns, we perform two tests. First, as in the analysis of loan

characteristics, we make use of a falsification test to show that expansion of mortgage

lending by lobbying firms does not merely reflect unobserved lender characteristics

correlated with lobbying activities in general. We find no statistically significant relationship

between delinquency rates and the relative expansion of mortgage lending by lenders that

lobbied on financial issues unrelated to securitization or consumer protection in mortgage

lending. This suggests that lobbying by financial institutions is unlikely to be a general

proxy for specific unobserved lenders’ characteristics that could be systematically correlated

with delinquency rates (columns (4) and (5) in Table 11a).

Second, we develop an instrumental variable strategy to further address such omitted factors

bias. As a first instrument, we consider the sum of the 1998 market share in the MSA of

lenders who lobbied on specific issues, in which each lender’s initial market share is

40 Notice that we have information on delinquency rates only at the MSA level. The lobbying variable on the other hand exists only at the lender level, hence we analyze the effect of market share in an MSA of lenders that lobby on delinquency rates.

28

weighted by the distance between each lender’s headquarters and Washington, D.C. This

instrument is valid under the following conditions: (i) the initial presence of a lender in a

MSA is pre-determined and is unlikely to be correlated with the lending conditions that

prevailed in this MSA during the following years; (ii) the distance between a lender’s

headquarters and Washington, D.C. – a proxy for certain costs of lobbying in general – is

uncorrelated with lending conditions in any specific MSA. The rationale for this instrument

is the following. First, a smaller initial market share may result in more aggressive lending to

expand activities. Second, a larger (respectively smaller) distance of headquarters to

Washington, D.C. may reduce (respectively increase) the impact lobbying activities may

have on lending practices at the local level, hence reinforcing (weakening) the effect of the

initial market share on subsequent lending growth at the local level.41 Therefore, we expect a

negative correlation between the instrument and the endogenous variable.

We consider a second instrument defined in a similar way (an initial market share weighted

by the distance variable), but considering instead the initial market share of lenders lobbying

on financial sector issues that are not related to securitization and mortgage lending. The

rationale is that, in MSAs in which these other lenders have a larger initial presence, lenders

lobbying on our issues of interest may intensify their lending activities and gain market share

even more when these other lenders have a higher cost of lobbying (e.g. a long distance to

Washington, D.C.).

Regression results are reported in Table 11b, and confirm the conclusions of our OLS

estimations. When instrumenting the variable of interest, the coefficient increases

significantly, suggesting that there might be an attenuation bias in the OLS estimates. In

regressions combining the two instruments, the Hansen J tests accepts the validity of the

instruments. Furthermore, to allay concerns of weak instrument bias, we also make use of

LIML estimator known to be more robust to weak instrument bias, and confirm the 2SLS

results.

41 The exclusion restriction is that the initial market share of lobbying lenders is uncorrelated with unobserved shocks that may affect delinquency rates in 2008.

29

G. Stock Price Returns During Crisis

In this section, we conduct an analysis of financial institutions’ stock returns during major

market events of the financial crisis to investigate the relationship between lobbying

activities and ex-post lender stock price performance during the financial crisis. This

analysis provides suggestive evidence on the perceived ex-post value of lobbying lenders

portfolios during the financial panics of 2007 and 2008. In particular, we would not expect

to find any significant abnormal returns if lobbying was not systematically related to the

quality of mortgage loans originated by the lenders. Regression results are reported in Table

12. Our analysis indicates that financial institutions that lobbied on specific issues

experienced negative abnormal returns during the major events of the financial crisis

suggesting that these financial institutions were significantly more exposed, directly or

indirectly, to bad mortgage loans.

The coefficient of interest is statistically significant at conventional levels in all the

specifications. Moreover, the estimated effect is very large. Using the estimated coefficient

for the market and risk adjusted returns, lobbying financial institutions lost on average 6.7

percent more in value during the 2007 events than other financial institutions; and 16.6

percent more in value during the 2008 events. The differential loss of value is even more

impressive during the Lehman failure: a 27 percent additional loss of value when returns are

adjusted for the market correlation. The results suggest that these financial institutions were

significantly more exposed to bad mortgage loans than other financial institutions.

Interestingly, the coefficient on the subprime lender dummy is insignificant in most

regressions - and even positive in one specification – suggesting that the estimated

coefficient does not merely reflect the effect of a specialization of the lender considered.

Another proxy for specialization – the log of mortgage loans originated in proportion to total

assets – does not alter our coefficient of interest, even though it has the expected negative

30

sign.42 We also control for the log of assets of the lender as a proxy for size, but find no

significant effect on abnormal stock returns.

H. Discussion of Results

To summarize, lobbying is associated ex ante with more risk-taking as measured by higher

LIR, higher securitization and faster credit expansion. In addition, there is evidence that

lobbying lenders are more prominent in areas with higher delinquency rates and had more

negative abnormal returns during the key events of the financial crisis.

Taken together, these results are consistent with moral hazard interpretations discussed in

Section III, which include expectations of preferential treatment (e.g. a higher probability of

being bailed out in the event of a financial crisis), or the expectation of high short-term gains

associated with riskier lending strategies.

Alternative explanations tend to be less consistent with our analysis. We consider three

alternative stories that could potentially explain the results: (i) bad lenders lobbying more, (ii)

specialization, and (iii) overoptimism.

First, suppose that bad lenders, who make bad loans, lobby more. The objective of bad

lenders, in other words, is to mimic the lobbying behavior of good lenders (who lobby to

signal theur superior information and to ensure that the regulations allow them to fully

explout such relative advantages). Yet, bad lenders do not have the precise information on

what issues the good lenders lobby for. So, they would lobby more in general and not

particularly on issues related to mortgage lending. However, falsification tests suggest

otherwise as we do not find lobbying on unrelated issues to be associated with more risk. An

additional piece of evidence against these story is that, assuming good lenders can survive

better and hence tend to be larger, we tend find a stronger correlation between lobbying and

ex-ante loan characteristics as well as ex-post performance for the largest lobbying lenders.

42 This variable is constructed for the year 2006.

31

Table 13, columns (1) and (2) show that the correlation between lobbying and LIR and

between lobbying and proportion of loans sold is indeed stronger for lenders in the top

quartile in terms of assets. Column (3) confirms that a similar result obtains for the

relationship between the growth of the market share of lobbying lenders and ex-post

delinquency rates. When the growth of market share for the subset of large lobbying lenders

is introduced as an additional variable, the estimated relationship is even stronger.

Second, lobbying lenders may be specialized in catering to riskier borrowers, e.g. borrowers

with lower income levels or operate in areas with higher average property prices. In this

case, we would expect lobbying to be associated with higher LIR, not necessarily indicating

lower credit standards but signaling the specialization of the lender. This is also consistent

with higher delinquency rates since riskier borrowers are more likely to default during a

downturn. However, we include explicit controls, e.g., whether the lender is subprime or is

regulated by HUD, as well as area and lender characteristics to capture such specialization

effects. Moreover, inclusion of variables that could explain defaults at the MSA level, e.g.,

house price changes, and the instrumental variable strategy in the delinquency rate analysis

suggest that the estimated effect does not capture unobserved shocks that may affect the

probability of default in areas in which lobbying lenders expanded their activity more than

others.

Third, and perhaps the most likely, alternative interpretation is that overoptimistic lenders

may have underestimated the likelihood of an adverse event affecting the mortgage market

more than other financial intermediaries did.43 Under this interpretation, these lenders would

have lobbied to prevent a tightening of lending standards to exploit their better information

on the market or to fully use their capacity at increasing the supply of mortgage loans.44 45

43 For example, rating agencies and sponsors severely underestimated the probability of default and loss given default when assigning ratings to mortgage-backed securities (Calomiris, 2008).

44 In theory, the information transmitted by the act of lobbying could also be non-credible and may have no influence on policies. However, the sheer size of the amounts spent on lobbying by the financial industry in relation to consumer protection in mortgage lending and securitization cast doubts on this interpretation.

32

Such an interpretation based on overoptimism would also be consistent with lax lending and

higher ex-post exposure of lobbying lenders to poorly performing pools of mortgage loans.

However, our analysis shows that the relaxation of lending standards of lobbying lenders was

even stronger in 2005 and 2006. In particular, we test whether the average LIR of loans

originated by lobbying lenders significantly changed following the SEC relaxation of capital

requirement for investment banks in 2004 (Table 13, columns (4) and (5)). We find that LIR

for lobbying lenders increased significantly relative to their own sample average (column

(4)), as well as relative to all lenders when year dummies are included in the specification

(column (5)).46 This result implies that, following an event that relaxed some constraints on

the demand for securitized mortgages, lobbying lenders relaxed their lending standards more

than other lenders. Keeping in mind the caveat that the our proxies may be imperfect

measures of lending standards, it is not clear why lenders would have become even more

overoptimistic during the years when signs of stress in the housing market were becoming

visible.47

VI. CONCLUSION

This paper studies the relationship between lobbying by financial institutions and mortgage

lending. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study documenting how lobbying may

have contributed to the accumulation of risks leading the way to the current financial crisis.

We carefully construct a database at the lender level combining information on loan

characteristics and lobbying expenditures on laws and regulations related to mortgage

lending (such as consumer protection laws) and securitization. We show that lenders that

lobby more intensively on these specific issues have (i) more lax lending standards measured

by loan-to-income ratio, (ii) greater tendency to securitize, and (iii) faster growing mortgage

loan portfolios. Ex post, delinquency rates are higher in areas in which lobbying lenders’

45 Another possibility is that “good” lenders lobbied for tighter lending laws to prevent entry by not-so-good lenders. This interpretation is, however, inconsistent with all key findings.

46 The inclusion of year fixed effects implies that the estimated effect for the period post-2004 is relative to the average for the complete sample of lenders.

47 Gerardi et al. (2009) show that most foreclosures stem from loans originated in 2005 and 2006, at a time when lenders, despite warning signs of a housing downturn, continued to assign a low probability to such an event.

33

mortgage lending grew faster, and, during key events of the crisis, these lenders experienced

negative abnormal stock returns. These findings seem to be consistent with a moral hazard

interpretation whereby financial intermediaries lobby to obtain private benefits, making loans

under less stringent terms. Moral hazard could emerge because they expect to be bailed out

when losses amount during a financial crisis or because they privilege short-term gains over

long-term profits. With the caveat that overoptimism might also be consistent with some of

the findings, our analysis suggests that the political influence of the financial industry can be

a source of systemic risk. Therefore, it provides some support to the view that the prevention

of future crises might require weakening political influence of the financial industry.

34

References Acemoglu, Daron, 2009, “The Crisis of 2008: Structural Lessons for and from Economics”, mimeo, MIT. Agarwal, Sumit and Faye H. Wang, 2009,” Perverse Incentives at the Banks? -- Evidence from a Natural Experiment”, mimeo, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. Becker, Gary, 1983, “A Theory of Competition among Pressure Groups for Political Influence”, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 98, 371-400. Bernanke, Ben and Mark Gertler, 1989, “Agency Costs, Net Worth, and Business Fluctuations,” American Economic Review, Vol. 79, No. 1, pp. 14–31. Berger, Allen and Gregory Udell, 2004, “The Institutional Memory Hypothesis and the Procyclicality of Bank Lending Behavior,” Journal of Financial Intermediation, Vol. 13, pp. 458–95. Bernheim, B. Douglas and Michael D. Whinston, 1986, “Menu Auctions, Resource Allocation, and Economic Influence,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 101(1), 1-31. Bertrand, Marianne, Francis Kramarz, Antoinette Schoar, and David Thesmar, 2004, “Politically Connected CEOs and Corporate Outcomes: Evidence from France,” mimeo, University of Chicago. Bolton, Patrick, Jose Scheinkman, and Wei Xiong, 2006, “Executive Compensation and Short-Termist Behaviour in Speculative Markets”, Review of Economic Studies, 73, 577–610. Bostic R., K. Engel, P. McCoy, A. Pennington-Cross, and S. Wachter, 2008, “State and Local Anti-predatory Lending Laws: The Effect of Legal Enforcement Mechanisms”, Journal of Economics and Business 60, 47–66. Calomiris, C., 2009, “The Subprime Turmoil: What’s Old, What’s New, and What’s Next”, Journal of Structured Finance, Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 6-52. Caselli and Gennaioli, 2008, “Economics and Politics of Alternative Institutional Reforms”, forthcoming, Quarterly Journal of Economics. Cheng, Ing-Haw, Hong, Harrison, and Jose Scheinkman, 2009, “Yesterday’s Heroes: Compensation and Creative Risk-Taking”, mimeo Princeton University. Claessens, Stijn, Erik Feijen, and Luc Laeven, 2008, “Political Connections and Preferential Access to Finance: The Role of Campaign Contributions”, Journal of Financial Economics 88 (3), 554-80.

35

Crawford, V. and J. Sobel. 1982, “Strategic Information Transmission.” Econometrica, 50(6), 1431-51. Dell’Ariccia, Giovanni and Robert Marquez, 2006, “Lending Booms and Lending Standards”, Journal of Finance 61 (5), 2511 – 46. Dell’Ariccia, Giovanni, Deniz Igan, and Luc Laeven, 2008, “Credit Booms and Lending Standards: Evidence from the Subprime Mortgage Market”, CEPR Discussion Papers No. 6683. Facchini, Giovanni, Anna Maria Mayda, and Prachi Mishra, 2008, “Do Interest Groups Affect Immigration Policy?”, CEPR Working Paper No. 6898. Faccio, Mara, 2006, “Politically Connected Firms”, The American Economic Review, Vol. 96, No.1, 369-386. Faccio, Mara and David C. Parsley, 2007, “Sudden deaths: Taking stock of geographic ties”, February, mimeo, Vanderbilt University. Fahlenbrach,Rüdiger and René M. Stulz, 2009, “ Bank CEO Incentives and the Credit Crisis”, NBER Working Paper 15212. Fisman, Raymond, 2001, “Estimating the Value of Political Connections”, American Economic Review 91, 1095-102. Fisman D., R. Fisman, J. Galef, and R. Khurana, 2006, “The Cheney Effect: Valuing Political Connections in America”, mimeo. Gawande, K. and U. Bandyopadhyay, 2000, “Is Protection for Sale? Evidence on the Grossman-Helpman Theory of Endogenous Protection”, Review of Economics and Statistics 82, 139-52. Gerardi, K., Lehnert, A., Sherland S. M., and Paul S. Willen, 2009, “Making Sense of the Subprime Crisis”, Public Policy Discussion Paper 09-1, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. Goldberg, P. K. and G. Maggi, 1999, “Protection for Sale: An Empirical Investigation”, American Economic Review 89 (5), 1135-55. Gorton, G. and G. Pennacchi, 1995, “Banks and Loan Sales: Marketing Nonmarketable Assets”, Journal of Monetary Economics, 35, 389-411. Gorton, G., 2008a, “The Panic of 2007,” Proceedings of the 2008 Jackson Hole Conference, “Maintaining Stability in a Changing Financial System,” Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.

36

Gorton, G., 2008b, “The Subprime Panic”, NBER Working Paper 14398. Grossman, G. M. and E. Helpman, 1994, “Protection for Sale”, American Economic Re- view 84, 833-50. Grossman, Gene and Elhanan Helpman. 2001. Special Interest Politics. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Hastard, B. and J. Svensson, 2008, “From Corruption to Lobbying and Economic Growth”, mimeo, Kellogg School of Management. Ho, Giang and Anthony Pennington-Cross, 2006, “The Impact of Local Predatory Lending Laws on the Flow of Subprime Credit”, Journal of Urban Economics, 210-28. Holmstrom, B. and J. Tirole, 1997, “Financial Intermediation, Loanable Funds, and the Real Sector”, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 52, 663-692. Johnson, Simon, 2009, “The Quiet Coup,” The Atlantic, May; available at http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200905/imf-advice. Johnson, Simon and Todd Mitton, 2003, “Cronyism and Capital Controls: Evidence from Malaysia,” Journal of Financial Economics 67, 351-382. Khwaja, Asim and Atif Mian, 2005, “Do Lenders Favor Politically Connected Firms? Rent Provision in an Emerging Financial Market”, Quarterly Journal of Economics 120, 1371-411. Kiyotaki, Nobihuro and John Moore, 1997, “Credit Cycles,” Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 105, pp. 211–48. Kroszner, Randall and Philip Strahan, 1999, “What Drives Deregulation? Economics and Politics of the Relaxation of Bank Branching Restrictions”, Quarterly Journal of Economics 114 (4), 1437-67. Kroszner, Randall and Thomas Stratmann, 1998, “Interest-Group Competition of Congress: Theory and Evidence from Financial Services’ Political Action Committees”, American Economic Review, Vol. 88, No. 5, pp. 1163-87. Krueger, Anne O., 1974, “The Political Economy of Rent-Seeking Society”, American Economic Review 64 (3), 291-303. Ludema, Rodney, Anna Maria Mayda, and Prachi Mishra, 2008, “Protection for Free: An Analysis of U.S. Tariff Exemptions”, (in progress). Mayer, Christopher, Karen Pence, and Shane M. Sherlund, 2009, “The Rise in Mortgage Default”, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 27-50.

37

Mian, Atif and Amir Sufi, 2009, “The Consequences of Mortgage Credit Expansion: Evidence from the U.S. Mortgage Default Crisis”, forthcoming, Quarterly Journal of Economics. Mian, Atif and Amir Sufi, 2009, “House Prices, Home Equity-Based Borrowing, and the U.S. Household Leverage Crisis”, mimeo, University of Chicago. Mian, Atif, Amir Sufi, and Francesco Trebbi, 2009, “The Political Economy of the US Mortgage Default Crisis,”, forthcoming, American Economic Review. Nadauld, Taylor and Shane M. Sherlund, 2009, “The Role of the Securitization Process in the Expansion of Subprime Credit,” Finance and Economics Discussion Series Working Paper 2009-28, Federal Reserve Board, Washington, D.C. Potters, Jan and Frans Van Winden, 1992, “Lobbying and Asymmetric Information,” Public Choice 74, 269-92. Reiss, David, 2009, “Regulation of Subprime and Predatory Lending,” Brooklyn Law School Legal Studies Research Paper No. 142. Snyder, J. M., 1990, “Campaign Contributions as Investments: The U.S. House of Represen- tatives 1908-1986”, Journal of Political Economy 61, 195-206. Stigler, George, 1971, “The Theory of Economic Regulation”, Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science, II, 3-21. Rajan, R., 1994, “Why Bank Credit Policies Fluctuate: A Theory and Some Evidence”, Quarterly Journal of Economics 109, 399-441. Sirota, David, 2003, Essentials of Real Estate Finance, Dearborn Financial Publishing, Chicago. Tressel, T. and T. Verdier, 2008, “Financial Globalization and the Governance of Financial Intermediaries”, forthcoming, Journal of the European Economic Association.

38

Election cycle 1999-2000 2001-02 2003-04 2005-06

Contributions from PACs 326 348 461 509

Overall lobbying expenditure 2,972 3,348 4,081 4,747

Of which expenditure by finance, insurance, and real estate industry (FIRE) 437 478 645 720Share of FIRE in overall lobbying (in percent) 14.7 14.3 15.8 15.2

Total targeted political activity 3,298 3,696 4,542 5,256

Source: Center for Responsive Politics.

Table 1a. Targeted Political Activity Campaign Contributions and Lobbying Expenditures(millions of dollars)

YearTotal lobbying by financial

intermediariesOf which: Lobbying on

specific issuesTotal lobbying by

associations1999 62 48 4 2000 71 54 4 2001 77 38 6 2002 80 57 9 2003 99 55 11 2004 99 62 12 2005 95 77 13 2006 94 85 14 Total 677 475 73

Total 2005-06 189 162 27

Table 1b. Lobbying by Financial Institutions and Lenders' Associations(millions of dollars)

Mean Median Std. Deviation

Lender level

Lobbying dummy 0.19 0.00 0.39Lobbying amount, total 179702 0.00 910208Lobbying on specific issues dummy 0.06 0.00 0.24Lobbying on specific issues amount, total 4775 0.00 31821Loan-to-income ratio 1.97 1.91 0.91Percent of loans sold 70.10 99.64 40.75Subprime dummy 0.24 0.00 0.43Assets (2006) 3.E+07 1.E+04 2.E+08

Lenders that lobby

Lobbying amount, total 940729 80000 1910834Lobbying on specific issues dummy 0.29 0.00 0.45Lobbying on specific issues amount, total 24973 0.00 69596Loan-to-income ratio 1.92 1.90 0.70Percent of loans sold 0.65 0.81 0.38Subprime dummy 0.22 0.00 0.41Assets (2006) 2.E+08 3.E+06 4.E+08

Lenders that do not lobby

Loan-to-income ratio 1.99 1.91 0.96Percent of loans sold 0.71 1.00 0.41Subprime dummy 0.24 0.00 0.43Assets (2006) 2.E+07 1.E+04 2.E+08

MSA level

Average income 31044 29858 7278GDP growth 5.38 5.32 3.02Self-employment rate 3.72 4.15 3.53Unemployment rate 4.91 4.60 1.83House price appreciation 6.70 5.12 6.52

Log population 13.25 12.92 1.39Number of lenders 262 232 124Number of applications, total 44134 16499 69645Number of applications, average lender 122 8 653Regulation dummy 0.79 1.00 0.41

Number of lender-MSAYear Total Specific issues1999 74,404 0.14 0.072000 69,899 0.15 0.072001 70,788 0.16 0.042002 76,920 0.15 0.082003 92,482 0.14 0.092004 82,955 0.15 0.082005 93,685 0.12 0.082006 94,978 0.13 0.09

Table 2. Summary Statistics

Fraction that lobbyMatch Statistics between HMDA and Lobbying Datasets

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]

Dummy=1 if lender lobbies for specific issues 0.012*** 0.077*** 0.144*** 0.074*** 0.078*** 0.138*** 0.144***[0.005] [0.004] [0.004] [0.003] [0.004] [0.004] [0.004]

Average income in MSA 0.023*** 0.024*** 0.030*** 0.028***[0.000] [0.000] [0.001] [0.001]

GDP growth rate in MSA -1.042*** -1.168*** -1.132*** -1.095***[0.042] [0.042] [0.053] [0.052]

Self-employment rate in MSA 1.567*** 1.509*** -0.26 -0.276*[0.050] [0.050] [0.159] [0.157]

Unemployment rate in MSA 2.837*** 2.652*** -1.672*** -1.656***[0.081] [0.082] [0.183] [0.181]

Log total population in MSA -0.089*** -0.080*** -0.469*** -0.479***[0.003] [0.003] [0.055] [0.054]

Annual change in house price appreciation 1.555*** 1.533*** 0.118*** 0.119***[0.025] [0.025] [0.033] [0.032]

Number of competing lenders in MSA 0.282*** 0.268*** 0.248*** 0.255***[0.008] [0.008] [0.015] [0.015]

Number of loan applications in MSA 0.020*** 0.046*** 0.152*** 0.178***[0.004] [0.004] [0.009] [0.009]

Log (assets of lender) 0.008*** 0.011*** 0.009***[0.001] [0.001] [0.001]

Dummy=1 if regulator is US HUD 0.236*** 0.213*** 0.212***[0.004] [0.004] [0.004]

Market share of lender in MSA 3.637*** 3.870*** 4.109***[0.112] [0.106] [0.104]

Log (income of applicants of loans originated by lender) -0.052*** -0.058*** -0.063***[0.001] [0.001] [0.001]

Dummy=1 if lender is subprime -0.014*** -0.006** 0.000[0.003] [0.003] [0.003]

Number of observations 648,938 581,105 581,105 648,938 581,105 581,105 648,938

MSA fixed effects No No No Yes Yes Yes YesYear fixed effects No No No Yes Yes Yes YesMSA*year fixed effects No No No No No No

Dependent variable: Loan-to-income ratio at (lender, MSA, year) level

Lobbying on specific issues refers to lobbying on bills and regulations related to mortgage lending (such as consumer protection laws) and securitization. See text for details. Standard errors denoted in parentheses are clustered at the lender-MSA level.. ***, ** and * represent statistical significance at 1, 5 and 10 percent, respectively.

Table 3. Effect of Lobbying on Loan-to-Income Ratio

Yes

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Log lender lobbying expenditures on specific issues 0.003*** 0.008*** 0.003*** 0.003*** 0.004***[0.000] [0.000] [0.000] [0.000] [0.000]

Log (assets of lender) 0.008***[0.000]

Market share of lender in MSA 4.366***[0.103]

Log (income of applicants of loans originated by lender) -0.043***[0.001]

Number of observations 648,938 648,938 648,938 648,938 648,938

MSA fixed effects No Yes Yes Yes YesYear fixed effects No Yes Yes Yes YesLender fixed effects No No Yes Yes YesMSA*year fixed effects No No No Yes Yes

Dependent variable: Loan-to-income ratio at (lender, MSA, year) level

Table 4. Effect of Lobbying Expenditures on Loan-to-Income Ratio

Lobbying on specific issues refers to lobbying on bills and regulations related to mortgage lending (such as consumer protection laws) and securitization. Large lenders are the top quartile of lobbying lenders (in terms of assets). See text for details. Standard errors denoted in parentheses are clustered at the lender-MSA level. ***, ** and * represent statistical

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

Dummy=1 if lender lobbies for specific issues -0.002 0.069*** 0.140*** 0.065*** 0.134*** 0.141***[0.005] [0.004] [0.004] [0.004] [0.004] [0.004]

Dummy=1 if lender lobbies only for other issues -0.160*** -0.088*** -0.026*** -0.084*** -0.023*** -0.019***[0.005] [0.005] [0.005] [0.004] [0.005] [0.005]

Average income in MSA 0.023*** 0.024*** 0.028***[0.000] [0.000] [0.001]

GDP growth rate in MSA -1.047*** -1.170*** -1.095***[0.042] [0.042] [0.052]

Self-employment rate in MSA 1.560*** 1.507*** -0.275*[0.050] [0.050] [0.157]

Unemployment rate in MSA 2.805*** 2.654*** -1.654***[0.081] [0.082] [0.181]

Log total population in MSA -0.089*** -0.080*** -0.479***[0.003] [0.003] [0.054]

Annual change in house price appreciation 1.549*** 1.534*** 0.119***[0.025] [0.025] [0.032]

Number of competing lenders in MSA 0.280*** 0.267*** 0.255***[0.008] [0.008] [0.015]

Number of loan applications in MSA 0.019*** 0.045*** 0.178***[0.004] [0.004] [0.009]

Log (assets of lender) 0.009*** 0.012*** 0.010***[0.001] [0.001] [0.001]

Dummy=1 if regulator is US HUD 0.237*** 0.215*** 0.214***[0.004] [0.005] [0.004]

Market share of lender in MSA 3.632*** 3.862*** 4.100***[0.113] [0.106] [0.104]

Log (income of applicants of loans originated by lender) -0.051*** -0.057*** -0.062***[0.001] [0.001] [0.001]

Dummy=1 if lender is subprime -0.015*** -0.008** -0.001[0.003] [0.003] [0.003]

Number of observations 648,938 581,105 581,105 648,938 581,105 648,938

MSA fixed effects No No No Yes Yes YesYear fixed effects No No No Yes Yes YesMSA*year fixed effects No No No No No

Lobbying on specific issues refers to laws and regulations related to financial and banking sector policies. See text for details. Lobbying on other issues is measured by total lobbying expenditures if the lender lobbies only for other issues, and zero otherwise. Standard errors denoted in parentheses are clustered at the lender-MSA level.. ***, ** and * represent significance at 1, 5 and 10 percent, respectively.

Table 5. Effect of Lobbying on Loan-to-Income Ratio : Falsification Tests

Dependent variable: Loan-to-income ratio at (lender, MSA, year) level

Yes

43

[1] [2] [3]

(Log lender lobbying expenditures on specific issues)t-1 0.586*** 0.612*** 0.856***[0.096] [0.021] [0.033]

Log (assets of lender) -0.030***[0.002]

Market share of lender in MSA 1.932***[0.206]

Log (income of applicants of loans originated by lender) -0.047***[0.002]

Number of observations 405,839 405,837 405,837First stage F-stat 113 1192 688

p-value 0.000 0.000 0.000

MSA fixed effects No Yes YesYear fixed effects No Yes YesLender fixed effects No Yes YesMSA*year fixed effects No Yes Yes

[1] [2] [3]

(Log distance to Washington DC * ROW purchases of US treasuries)t-1 0.080*** 0.207*** 0.155***[0.007] [0.006] [0.006]

Log (assets of lender) 0.041***[0.001]

Market share of lender in MSA 1.434***[0.215]

Log (income of applicants of loans originated by lender) 0.016***[0.001]

Number of observations 405,839 405,839 405,839

MSA fixed effects No Yes YesYear fixed effects No Yes YesLender fixed effects No Yes YesMSA*year fixed effects No Yes Yes

Table 6. Effect of Lobbying Expenditures on Loan-to-Income Ratio: Instrumental Variables

Lobbying on specific issues refers to lobbying on bills and regulations related to mortgage lending (such as consumer protection laws) and securitization. Lender lobbying expenditures on specific issues is instrumented by the interaction of distance of the lender's headquarter to Washington, DC (lender-varying) and rest of the world's purchases of US treasuries (time-varying). See text for details. The first-stage regressions are shown in Table 5b. Standard errors denoted in parentheses are clustered at the MSA level. ***, ** and * represent statistical significance at 1, 5 and 10 percent, respectively.

First Stage Results

Dependent variable: Loan-to-income ratio at (lender, MSA, year) level

Dependent variable: Log lender lobbying expenditures on specific issues at at (lender, year) level

44

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

(Log lender lobbying expenditures on specific issues)t-1 0.020*** 0.020*** 0.020*** 0.020*** 0.020***[0.007] [0.007] [0.006] [0.006] [0.006]

Log (assets of lender) -0.001 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000[0.004] [0.004] [0.004] [0.004] [0.004]

Market share of lender in MSA -0.391* -0.387* -0.394* -0.390* -0.389*[0.214] [0.213] [0.213] [0.213] [0.213]

Log (income of applicants of loans originated by lender) -0.052*** -0.052*** -0.053*** -0.053*** -0.053***[0.005] [0.005] [0.005] [0.005] [0.005]

Number of observations 54,751 54,751 54,751 54,751 54,751Hansen Test: P-value 0.075 0.236 0.264 0.344 0.404AR2 test: P-value 0.555 0.555 0.555 0.554 0.554Number of instruments 22 26 29 31 32Number of lags used as instruments 1 2 3 4 5

Year fixed effects Yes Yes Yes Yes YesLender fixed effects Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Dependent variable: Loan-to-income ratio at (lender, year) level

Table 7. Effect of Lobbying Expenditures on Loan-to-Income Ratios -- System GMM

The data is collapsed at the lender-year level. Market share at the lender-year level is a weighted average of market shares at the lender-MSA-year level, with weights being the share of loans originated by a lender during a particular year in a given MSA. Lobbying on specific issues refers to lobbying on bills and regulations related to mortgage lending (such as consumer protection laws) and securitization. See text for details. All specifications are estimated by system GMM. Lagged log lender lobbying expenditures on specific issues is treated as endogenous. Lagged levels (in the first difference equation) and lagged differences (in the levels equation) of this variable are used as internal instruments, whereas the external instrument is the same as in Table 5, i.e., the interaction of distance of the lender's headquarter to Washington, DC (lender-varying) and rest of the world's purchases of US treasuries (time-varying). Standard errors denoted in parentheses are clustered at the lender level. ***, ** and * represent statistical significance at 1, 5 and 10 percent, respectively.

45

[1] [2] [3] [4]

Dummy=1 if anti-predatory lending law in (MSA, year) 0.166*** 0.015*** 0.006 0.006[0.004] [0.005] [0.005] [0.005]

(Log lender lobbying expenditures on specific issues)t-1 0.007*** 0.009*** 0.008*** 0.007***[0.001] [0.001] [0.001] [0.001]

(Log lender lobbying expenditures)t-1*Lending law -0.001 -0.007*** -0.006*** -0.005***[0.001] [0.002] [0.001] [0.001]

Average income in MSA 0.028*** 0.028***[0.002] [0.002]

GDP growth rate in MSA -0.959*** -0.952***[0.053] [0.053]

Self-employment rate in MSA -0.128 -0.104[0.165] [0.164]

Unemployment rate in MSA -2.221*** -2.251***[0.255] [0.252]

Log total population in MSA -0.540*** -0.560***[0.063] [0.062]

Annual change in house price appreciation 0.086** 0.095***[0.035] [0.034]

Number of competing lenders in MSA 0.186*** 0.188***[0.016] [0.015]

Number of loan applications in MSA 0.102*** 0.126***[0.010] [0.010]

Log (assets of lender) 0.008***[0.000]

Market share of lender in MSA 2.750***[0.092]

Log (income of applicants of loans originated by lender) -0.029***[0.001]

Number of observations 406,035 406,035 355,656 355,656

Lender fixed effects No No Yes Yes

MSA fixed effects No Yes Yes YesYear fixed effects No Yes Yes Yes

Table 8. Effect of Specific Issues Lobbying Expenditures: Difference-in-Difference Strategy

Lobbying on specific issues refers to lobbying on bills and regulations related to mortgage lending (such as consumer protection laws) and securitization. Standard errors denoted in parentheses are clustered at the lender-MSA level. ***, ** and * represent statistical significance at 1, 5 and 10 percent, respectively.

Dependent variable: Loan-to-income ratio at (lender, MSA, year) level

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

(Log lender lobbying expenditures on specific issues)t-1 -0.005*** 0.007*** 0.007*** 0.309*** 0.024*** 0.024***[0.000] [0.000] [0.000] [0.025] [0.005] [0.006]

Log (assets of lender) -0.000** -0.001***[0.000] [0.000]

Market share of lender in MSA 0.215*** 0.193***[0.026] [0.026]

Log (income of applicants of loans originated by lender) 0.002*** 0.001***[0.000] [0.000]

Number of observations 406,035 406,035 406,035 405,839 405,837 405,837First stage F-stat 113 1192 688

p-value 0.000 0.000 0.000

MSA fixed effects No Yes Yes No Yes YesYear fixed effects No Yes Yes No Yes YesLender fixed effects No Yes Yes No Yes YesMSA*year fixed effects No Yes Yes No Yes Yes

Lobbying on specific issues refers to lobbying on bills and regulations related to mortgage lending (such as consumer protection laws) and securitization. In Columns [4]-[6], lender lobbying expenditures on specific issues is instrumented by the interaction of distance of the lender's headquarter to Washington, DC (lender-varying) and rest of the world's purchases of US treasuries (time-varying). See text for details. Standard errors denoted in parentheses are clustered at the lender-MSA level. ***, ** and * represent statistical significance at 1, 5 and 10 percent, respectively.

Table 9. Effect of Specific Issues Lobbying Expenditures on Proportion of Loans Sold

Dependent variable: Proportion of loans sold at (lender, MSA, year) level

Ordinary Least Squares Instrumental Variables

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

(Log lender lobbying expenditures on specific issues)t-1 0.277*** 0.305*** 0.322*** 1.997*** 2.846** 2.629*[0.085] [0.087] [0.118] [0.677] [1.376] [1.490]

Log (assets of lender) -0.113** -0.214***[0.047] [0.040]

Market share of lender in MSA -27.750** -30.550***[12.112] [10.803]

Log (income of applicants of loans originated by lender) 0.740*** 0.699***[0.079] [0.092]

Number of observations 406,996 406,996 385,701 406,799 406,797 385,503

MSA fixed effects No Yes Yes No Yes YesYear fixed effects No Yes Yes No Yes YesLender fixed effects No No Yes No No YesMSA*year fixed effects No No Yes No No Yes

Dependent variable: Growth in amount of originated loans at (lender, MSA, year) level

Lobbying on specific issues refers to lobbying on bills and regulations related to mortgage lending (such as consumer protection laws) and securitization. In Columns [4]-[6], lender lobbying expenditures on specific issues is instrumented by the interaction of distance of the lender's headquarter to Washington, DC (lender-varying) and rest of the world's purchases of US treasuries (time-varying). See text for details. Standard errors denoted in parentheses are clustered at the lender-MSA level. ***, ** and * represent statistical significance at 1, 5 and 10 percent, respectively.

Table 10. Effect of Specific Issues Lobbying Expenditures on Credit Growth

Ordinary Least Squares Instrumental Variables

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

excl. CA, FL & NE

Growth in market share of lenders lobbying on specific issues 0.6530*** 0.2197* 0.6026*** 0.6824*** 0.2234*(average 2000-06) [0.1411] [0.1174] [0.1348] [0.1442] [0.1180]

Growth in market share of lenders lobbying on other issues -0.0408 -0.0315(average 2000-06) [0.0634] [0.1037]

House price appreciation -0.3082*** -0.2806*** -0.4071*** -0.3052*** -0.2781***[0.0604] [0.0647] [0.0672] [0.0604] [0.0645]

Average income 0.0020*** 0.0021*** 0.0013* 0.0020*** 0.0021***[0.0007] [0.0006] [0.0007] [0.0007] [0.0006]

Share of subprime loans in MSA 0.7129*** 0.6508*** 0.6136*** 0.7105*** 0.6495***[0.0932] [0.0930] [0.1248] [0.0928] [0.0925]

Share of hispanics in population -0.0435*** -0.0320*** -0.0454*** -0.0417*** -0.0312***[0.0111] [0.0074] [0.0162] [0.0111] [0.0071]

GDP growth -0.1886** -0.1124*** -0.1914* -0.1863** -0.1124**[0.0849] [0.0417] [0.0959] [0.0842] [0.0423]

Log number of lenders 0.0569*** 0.0344*** 0.0438*** 0.0561*** 0.0339***[0.0126] [0.0103] [0.0140] [0.0125] [0.0102]

Log population -0.0148*** -0.0094** -0.0080* -0.0147*** -0.0092**[0.0044] [0.0037] [0.0043] [0.0044] [0.0037]

State clusters YES YES YES YES YESState fixed effect NO YES YES NO YES

Observations 306 306 258 306 306R-squared 0.54 0.79 0.61 0.54 0.79

Lobbying on specific issues refers to lobbying on bills and regulations related to mortgage lending (such as consumer protection laws) and securitization. Large lenders are the top quartile of lobbying lenders (in terms of assets). ***, ** and * represent statistical significance at 1, 5 and 10 percent, respectively. Robust standard errors are in brackets.

Table 11a. Effect of Lobbying on Loan Outcomes

Dependent variable: Delinquency rate in 2008 at (MSA, year) level

Falsification

49

(1) (2) (3) (4)Method of estimation LIML 2SLS LIML LIML

Growth in market share of lenders lobbying on specific issues 1.8687** 1.4745** 1.6102* 1.6102**(average 2000-06) [0.8989] [0.6768] [0.8225] [0.7794]

House price appreciation -0.2693*** -0.2819*** -0.2776*** -0.2776***[0.0566] [0.0565] [0.0576] [0.0375]

Average income 0.0018*** 0.0019*** 0.0018*** 0.0018***[0.0007] [0.0006] [0.0006] [0.0005]

Share of subprime loans in MSA 0.7422*** 0.7327*** 0.7360*** 0.7360***[0.0914] [0.0897] [0.0907] [0.0739]

Share of hispanics in population -0.0368*** -0.0390*** -0.0383*** -0.0383***[0.0114] [0.0111] [0.0114] [0.0088]

GDP growth -0.114 -0.1382 -0.1299 -0.1299*[0.0947] [0.0894] [0.0943] [0.0727]

Log number of lenders 0.0532*** 0.0544*** 0.0540*** 0.0540***[0.0115] [0.0113] [0.0114] [0.0092]

Log population -0.0131*** -0.0137*** -0.0135*** -0.0135***[0.0043] [0.0041] [0.0041] [0.0030]

State clusters YES YES YES NOObservations 306 306 306 306R-squared 0.36 0.46 0.43 0.43Hansen J stat (p value) . 0.29 0.29 0.11

First Stage Results

Dependent variable: Growth in market share of lenders lobbying on specific issues

Initial market share of lenders lobbying on specific issues -0.0086** -0.0114*** -0.0119*** -0.0119***Weighted by HQ distance to D.C., in log [0.0034] [0.0039] [0.0038] [0.0038]

Initial market share of lenders lobbying on other issues . 0.0084** 0.0084** 0.0084*Weighted by HQ distance to D.C., in log [0.0043] [0.0034] [0.0043]

F-test of excluded instruments 6.462 4.56 4.56 5.78Stock-Yogo critical values

10% 16.38 19.93 8.68 8.6815% 8.96 11.59 5.33 5.3320% 6.66 8.75 4.42 4.4225% 5.53 7.25 3.92 3.92

Table 11b. Effect of Lobbying on Loan Outcomes: Instrumental Variables

Dependent variable: Delinquency rate in 2008 at (MSA, year) level

Lobbying on specific issues refers to lobbying on bills and regulations related to mortgage lending (such as consumer protection laws) and securitization. ***, ** and * represent statistical significance at 1, 5 and 10 percent, respectively. Robust standard errors are in brackets.

Dependent variable

(1) & (2) (3) & (4) (4) (1) & (2) (3) & (4) (4) (1) & (2) (3) & (4) (4)

Lender lobbies on specific issues -0.0970*** -0.1799*** -0.2973** -0.0176* -0.1522** -0.2745** -0.0518*** -0.1569** -0.2739**[0.0104] [0.0662] [0.1252] [0.0096] [0.0633] [0.1210] [0.0094] [0.0627] [0.1201]

Subprime lender 0.1121*** 0.0869 0.2370* 0.0327*** 0.0846 0.2373* 0.0267*** 0.0754 0.2233*[0.0082] [0.0718] [0.1339] [0.0076] [0.0686] [0.1294] [0.0075] [0.0680] [0.1285]

Log(total assets) -0.0061*** 0.0060 -0.0000 -0.0008 0.0080 0.0014 0.0012 0.0071 -0.0004[0.0018] [0.0103] [0.0195] [0.0017] [0.0099] [0.0188] [0.0017] [0.0098] [0.0187]

Log(mortgage loans/assets) -0.0095*** -0.0152* -0.0211 -0.0066*** -0.0120 -0.0179 -0.0056*** -0.0122 -0.0189[0.0018] [0.0085] [0.0160] [0.0016] [0.0081] [0.0154] [0.0016] [0.0080] [0.0153]

Constant 0.0077 -0.1104 -0.0345 -0.0151 -0.0964 -0.0130 0.0000 -0.1023 -0.0055[0.0278] [0.1569] [0.2918] [0.0257] [0.1499] [0.2820] [0.0253] [0.1487] [0.2801]

Event fixed effect YES YES NO YES YES NO YES YES NONumber of observations 459 137 67 459 137 67 459 137 67R-squared 0.53 0.09 0.13 0.19 0.07 0.12 0.13 0.07 0.12

Mean-adjusted stock price return is the stock price return over the month of the event, adjusted for its mean over 2007-08.

Table 12. Lobbying and Abnormal Stock Returns

Lobbying on specific issues refers to lobbying on bills and regulations related to mortgage lending (such as consumer protection laws) and securitization. ***, ** and * represent statistical significance at 1, 5 and 10 percent, respectively. Robust standard errors are in brackets.

Market- and risk-adjusted return is the stock price return over the month of the event, adjusted for the predicted return based on a CAPM where the market portfolio is proxied by the stock price index of financial institutions in the S&P500.Market events: (1) August 1-17, 2007: suspension of redemptions on funds with subprime exposures; (2) Dec 12, 2007: Fed, ECB, SNB and Bank of Canada jointly announce measures to address short-term funding market pressures; Fed establishes Term Auction Facility (TAF); (3) March 11-16, 2008: JP Morgan acquires Bear Stearns after Fed provides $30 billion in non-recourse funding; Fed creates Term Securities Lending Facility (TSLF) and Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF) to expand liquidity provision to wider group of counterparties; (4) September 15-16, 2008: U.S. Investment bank Lehman Brothers files for bankruptcy; U.S. authorities step in to rescue AIG.

Stock price return Mean-adjusted return Market- and risk-adjusted return

Market Event

(1) (2)

Log lender lobbying expenditures on specific issues 0.004*** Log lender lobbying expenditures on specific issues 0.001***[0.001] [0.000]

Log lender lobbying expenditures on specific issues 0.002* Log lender lobbying expenditures on specific issues 0.004**** dummy Large lender [0.001] * dummy Large lender [0.000]

Log (assets of lender) 0.008*** Log (assets of lender) 0.000**[0.000] [0.000]

Market share of lender in MSA 4.365*** Market share of lender in MSA 0.220***[0.103] [0.023]

Log (income of applicants of loans originated by lender) -0.043*** Log (income of applicants of loans originated by lender) 0.001***[0.001] [0.000]

MSA fixed effects Yes MSA fixed effects YesYear fixed effects Yes Year fixed effects YesLender fixed effects Yes Lender fixed effects YesMSA*year fixed effects Yes MSA*year fixed effects Yes

(3) (4) (5)

Growth in market share of lenders lobbying on specif 0.2177* Dummy=1 if lender lobbies for specific issues 0.113*** 0.125***(average 2000-06) [0.1107] [0.005] [0.004]

Growth in market share of lenders lobbying on specif 0.1143* Dummy=1 if lender lobbies for specific issues 0.119*** 0.072***(average 2000-06) - Large lenders [0.0646] & year is 2005 or 2006 [0.006] [0.006]

House price appreciation -0.2808*** Average income in MSA 0.024***[0.0657] [0.000]

Average income 0.0020*** GDP growth rate in MSA -1.194***[0.0006] [0.042]

Share of subprime loans in MSA 0.6565*** Self-employment rate in MSA 1.522***[0.0941] [0.050]

Share of hispanics in population -0.0327*** Unemployment rate in MSA 2.622***[0.0073] [0.082]

GDP growth -0.1146*** Log total population in MSA -0.078***[0.0424] [0.003]

Log number of lenders 0.0349*** House price appreciation 1.532***[0.0102] [0.025]

Log population -0.0091** Number of competing lenders in MSA 0.262***[0.0037] [0.008]

Number of loan applications in MSA 0.047***[0.004]

Log (assets of lender) 0.009*** 0.0089***[0.001] [0.0006]

Dummy=1 if regulator is US HUD 0.237*** 0.2127***[0.004] [0.0043]

Market share of lender in MSA 3.636*** 4.0946***[0.112] [0.1040]

Log (income of applicants of loans originated by lender) -0.052*** -0.0626***[0.001] [0.0010]

Dummy=1 if lender is subprime -0.016*** -0.0021[0.003] [0.0031]

State clusters Yes MSA fixed effects No YesState fixed effect Yes Year fixed effects No Yes

MSA*year fixed effects No Yes

Dependent variable: Loan-to-income ratio at (lender, MSA, year) level

After SEC rule change

Dependent variable: Loan-to-income ratio at (lender, MSA, year) level

Large lenders

Large lenders

Lobbying on specific issues refers to lobbying on bills and regulations related to mortgage lending (such as consumer protection laws) and securitization. In columns (1) to (3), large lenders are the top quartile of lobbying lenders (in terms of assets). Standard errors denoted in parentheses are clustered at the lender-MSA level in columns (1), (2), (4), and (5) and at the state level in column (3). ***, ** and * represent statistical significance at 1, 5 and 10 percent, respectively.

Table 13. Evidence Inconsistent with Alternative Explanations

Dependent variable: Proportion of loans sold at (lender, MSA, year) level

Dependent variable: Delinquency rate in 2008 at (MSA, year) level

52

Figure 1. Lobbying exp/firm, by sector, 2006

0

100,000

200,000

300,000

400,000

500,000

600,000

Oth

er

Law

yers

/lob

byis

ts

Con

stru

ctio

n

Ideo

logi

cal/s

ingl

e is

sue

Agr

ibus

ines

s

Def

ense

Hea

lth

Lab

or

Ene

rgy/

natu

ral r

esou

rces

Tra

nspo

rtat

ion

Mis

cella

neou

s bu

sine

ss

Com

mun

icat

ions

/ele

ctor

nics

Fina

nce/

insu

ranc

e/re

ales

tate

In U

S d

olla

rs

53

Figure 2. Evolution of lobbying lntensity (expenditures per firm) over time

90

95

100

105

110

115

120

125

130

135

1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

Ind

ex n

um

ber

: 19

98=

100

Finance, Insurance and Real EstateIndustry

Average lobbying intensity

Figure 3. Lending Standards

Loan to Income Ratio

1

1.5

2

2.5

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

54

Appendix

Lobbying Expenditures In addition to campaign contributions to officials and candidates for election purposes, companies, labor unions, and other organizations spend billions of dollars each year to lobby incumbent members of Congress and of federal agencies. Some special interests hire lobbying firms; others have lobbyists working in-house. The data on lobbying expenditures are compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) using the semi-annual lobbying disclosure reports filed with the Secretary of the Senate's Office of Public Records (SOPR) and posted to their website. We focus on the reports analyzed by CRP covering lobbying activity that took place from 1999 through 2006. The Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) of 1995 requires lobbying firms and organizations to register and file reports of their lobbying activities with the Secretary of the Senate and the Clerk of the House of Representatives. In general, it requires registration by any individual lobbyist (or the individual's employer if it employs one or more lobbyists) within 45 days after the individual first makes, or is employed or retained to make, a lobbying contact with either the President, the Vice President, a Member of Congress, or any other specified Federal officer or employee, including certain high-ranking members of the uniformed services. A registrant must file a report for the semiannual period when registration initially occurred and for each semiannual period thereafter, including the period during which registration terminates. Lobbying firms, i.e., entities with one or more lobbyists, including self-employed individuals who act as lobbyists for outside clients, are required to file a separate report for each client covered by a registration. Organizations employing in-house lobbyists file a single report for each semiannual period. The semiannual report is required to be filed no later than 45 days after the end of a semiannual period beginning on the first day of January and the first day of July of every year in which a registrant is registered. LDA requires the Secretary of the Senate and the Clerk of the House of Representatives to make all registrations and reports available to the public as soon as practicable after they are received. Under Section 3(10) of the LDA, an individual is defined as a “lobbyist" with respect to a particular client if he or she makes more than one lobbying contact (i.e. more than one communication to a covered official) and his or her “lobbying activities" constitute at least 20 percent of the individual's time in services for that client over any six-month period. “Lobbying activity" is defined in Section 3(7) of the LDA as “lobbying contacts or efforts in support of such contacts, including background work that is intended, at the time it was performed, for use in contacts, and coordination with the lobbying activities of others." Section 15 of the LDA permits those organizations that file under Sections 6033(b)(8) of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) and organizations that are subject to Section 162(e) of the IRC to use the tax law definitions of lobbying in lieu of the LDA definitions for determining “contacts" and “lobbying activities". The definition of lobbying in the tax law is broader with respect to the type of activities reported, while they are narrower with respect to

55

executive branch officials contacted. For example, the definition of lobbying under the tax code includes “grass-roots", state and local lobbying, while the LDA excludes these types of lobbying from the definition of “lobbying activities". Under the amendment of the LDA introduced in 1998, registrants who use tax law definitions of lobbying must use the IRC definition for executive branch lobbying and the LDA definition for legislative branch lobbying. There are three different filing methods listed in the form. Two options are largely identical one for-profit groups, the other for non-profits) and use the definition of lobbying provided by the IRC. The third follows the definition of lobbying contained in the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995. As discussed above, filers using the IRC methods must report state, local and grassroots lobbying costs, which are not included in LDA reports. Lobbying firms are required to provide a good-faith estimate rounded to the nearest $20,000 of all lobbying-related income in each six-month period. Likewise, organizations that hire lobbyists must provide a good-faith estimate rounded to the nearest $20,000 of all lobbying-related expenditures in a six-month period. An organization or a lobbying firm that spends less than $10,000 in any six-month period does not have to state its expenditures. In those cases, CRP treats the figure as zero. Annual lobbying expenditures and incomes (of lobbying firms) are calculated by adding mid-year totals and year-end totals. Whenever a lobbying report is amended, income/expense figures from the amendment are generally used instead of those from the original filing. Often, however, CRP staff determine that the income/expenditures on the amendment or termination report are inaccurate. In those instances, figures from the original filing are used. Occasionally, income that an outside lobbying firm reports receiving from a client is greater than the client's reported lobbying expenditures. Many such discrepancies can be explained by the fact that the client and the outside firm use different filing methods. When both organizations use the same method, discrepancies are generally due to filer error. In cases not already resolved in previous reports and where the discrepancy exceeds the $20,000 that can be attributed to rounding, the client's expenditures rather than the lobbying firm's reported income are used. The only exception is when a client reports no lobbying expenditures, while the outside lobbying firm lists an actual payment. In such cases, the figure reported by the lobbying firm is used. In cases where the data appears to contain errors, official Senate records are consulted and, when necessary, the CRP contacts SOPR or the lobbying organizations for clarification. The CRP standardizes variations in names of individuals and organizations to clearly identify them and more accurately represent their total lobbying expenditures. In cases where both a parent and its subsidiary organizations lobby or hire lobbyists, the Center attributes lobbying spending to the parent organization. Therefore, the lobbying totals reported by the Center for a parent organization may not reflect its original filing with the Senate, but rather the combined expenditures of all related entities.

56

However, to calculate lobbying expenditures by sector and industry, each subsidiary is counted within its own sector and industry, not those of its parent. The Center makes this distinction when it has the information necessary to distinguish some or all of the subsidiary's lobbying expenditures from either the subsidiary's own filing or from the receipts reported by outside lobbying firms. For example, tobacco giant Altria Group owns Kraft Foods. Although Altria Group's original filing included lobbying for Kraft in its expenditures, in the data set the Center isolated Kraft's payments to outside lobbyists and included them in `Food Processing and Sales.' When companies merge within any two-year election cycle, their lobbying expenditures are combined and attributed to the new entity. This is done in order to correlate lobbying data to campaign contribution data for each particular organization and industry. Interestingly, the LDA also requires the organization to state the issues on which the registrant engaged in lobbying during the reporting period. Table A1 shows 76 issues, at least one of which has to be entered by the registrant / filer. The filer can list more than one issue. In that case, she has to use a separate page of the form for each code selected. The list of issues includes immigration and trade. Surprisingly, the list of issues also includes names of some industries e.g. apparel, computer, tobacco etc. For each general issue, the filer is also required to list the specific issue which were lobbied for during the semi-annual period. For example, specific bills before Congress or specific executive branch actions are required to be listed in the Form. Table A2 shows a sample form filed by Bear Stearns for lobbying activity between July 1 – December 31, 2007; Table A3 shows a sample form filed by Bank of America for lobbying activity between July 1 – December 31, 2006. Only three selected pages of each form are shown in the appendix. Page 1 of the form shows the name and details of each company, the time period covered by the report and the expenses incurred by each company relating to lobbying activity during this period (for Bear Stearns, expenses were $500,000, and for Bank of America, $1,020,000). The lobbying expenditure by the organization, however, is listed only once on the first page of the form and the amount is not split among the issues. Bear Stearns lists the reporting method as “Method C"; that is, the reported amounts use Internal Revenue Code definitions of lobbying activities. This method is available to any registrant that is subject to Section 162(e) of the IRC. On the other hand, Bank of America uses “Method A” and reports amounts using LDA definitions only. The amount disclosed pertains to the semiannual period covered by this report, and the grassroots and state lobbying expenses are not subtracted from this amount. The other two pages of the forms in the appendix show general issues for which the companies engaged in lobbying activity (Bear Stearns: Banking and Bankruptcy; Bank of America: Banking and Housing). Specific House and Senate Bills of Interest In this paper, we focus on five general lobbying issues: Accounting, Banking, Bankruptcy, Housing, and Financial Institutions. Moreover, certain House and Senate bills are of

57

particular interest since they promote either tight or lax restrictions in these five general areas of interest. Bills that introduce tight restrictions for lenders focus primarily on predatory lending practices48 and high-cost mortgages49. For example, many bills contain restrictions/limits on annual percentage rates for mortgages, negative amortization, pre-payment penalties, balloon payments, late fees, and/or the financing of mortgage points and fees. Expanded consumer disclosure requirements regarding high-cost mortgages (such as including the total cost of lender fees on loan settlement paperwork or disclosing to consumers that they are borrowing at a higher interest rate) are introduced in some of the bills. Many of the bills prohibit high-cost mortgage lenders from engaging in other unfair or deceptive practices. Creditors are to evaluate each consumer’s ability to repay a loan before making the loan, and one bill stipulates that mortgage debt is not to exceed 50 percent of an individual’s income, and income is to be verified. Creditors are not to encourage consumers to default on loans; moreover, mortgage lenders and other creditors must report their consumers’ payment histories to credit reporting agencies. High-cost mortgage lenders may not accelerate a consumer’s debt if the consumer is making payments on time. In addition, individuals who provide mortgage lending or brokerage services must be adequately trained in high-cost lending. Civil penalties for engaging in predatory lending practices are increased. The following bulleted list offers greater detail on each of the specific bills that promote tighter mortgage market restrictions:

H.R. 1051: Predatory Lending Consumer Protection Act of 2001 o Introduced March 15, 2001; Never passed by House or Senate; Never signed

into law

48 While there is no single legal definition of predatory lending practices, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development offers the following examples as predatory lending practices by creditors: 1) charging unnecessary fees; 2) lending more money than a borrower could repay; 3) encouraging borrowers to lie on credit applications; 4) changing the terms of the loan at closing; 5) signing blank loan paperwork; and 6) charging higher fees based on a consumer’s race and not on a consumer’s credit history. (Please see http://www.hud.gov/offices/hsg/sfh/buying/loanfraud.cfm for more information.) For additional information, please see the National Conference on State Legislatures’ website (http://www.ncsl.org/programs/banking/predlend_intro.htm) for an overview of the predatory lending practices outlawed by each state legislature.

49 High-cost mortgages are often defined as mortgages that have annual percentage rates (APRs) that exceed the APR on Treasury securities by a certain number of percentage points. For example, the Predatory Lending Consumer Protection Act of 2002 (S. 2438) amended the Home Ownership Equity Protection Act to define high cost first mortgages as either 1) mortgages with APRs that are six percentage points above the Treasury security APR or 2) mortgages where the total cost of points and fees is greater than five percent of the total loan amount or $1000.

58

o H.R. 1051 amends the Truth in Lending Act regarding allowable annual percentage rates, total points and fees, pre-payment penalties, and balloon payments for high cost mortgages. The bill also requires additional disclosures to consumers and restricts high-cost mortgage creditors in financing mortgage points and fees and from accelerating a consumer’s debt or from encouraging consumer default. Consumers must fulfill a credit counseling requirement.

H.R. 1163: Predatory Mortgage Lending Practices Reduction Act

o Introduced April 8, 2003; Never passed by House or Senate; Never signed into law

o H.R. 1163 requires that any individual who provides mortgage lending or brokerage services be adequately trained in subprime lending. The bill also includes subprime lender requirements and prohibitions and penalties for unfair and deceptive practices. Furthermore, H.R. 1163 extends grants to community organizations offering education on subprime or illegal lending practices.

H.R. 1182: Prohibit Predatory Lending Act 2005

o Introduced March 9, 2005; Never passed by House or Senate; Never signed into law

o H.R. 1182 defines high-cost mortgages as 1) any primary mortgage with an interest rate eight percentage points above the yield on Treasury securities or 2) any secondary mortgage with an interest rate ten percentage points above the yield on Treasury securities. The bill addresses the calculation of points and pre-payment penalties; furthermore, it contains restrictions on balloon payments and late fees and prohibits debt acceleration. Additionally, H.R. 1182 prevents lenders from extending to credit to individuals who do not have the ability to repay the debt. For example, mortgage debt is not exceed 50 percent of an individual’s income, and income is to be verified by pay stubs, tax returns, etc.

H.R. 1295: Responsible Lending Act

o Introduced March 15, 2005; Never passed by House or Senate; Never signed into law

o H.R. 1295 defines “higher-cost mortgage” and includes requirements for mortgage product evaluation software and appraisals for properties secured by higher-cost mortgages. In addition, mortgage pamphlets distributed to consumers are to be updated and simplified and explain topics such as balloon payments, escrow accounts, and consumer responsibilities; furthermore, information should be provided in multiple languages and formats to reach vulnerable populations.

H.R. 1865: Prevention of Predatory Lending Through Education Act

o Introduced April 29, 2003; Never passed by House or Senate; Never signed into law

59

o Under H.R. 1865, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development is to award grants to state and local governments and non-profit organizations so that they may counsel and educate consumers on predatory lending practices.

H.R. 3607: Protecting Our Communities From Predatory Lending Practices Act

o Introduced December 20, 2001; Never passed by House or Senate; Never signed into law

o H.R. 3607 prohibits unfair or deceptive practices and statements regarding consumer credit transactions, applications, etc. In addition, the bill includes provisions that prohibit certain practices involving a consumer’s dwelling; that is, practices such as flipping consumer loans, financing credit insurance, charging fees for services not provided, and others are prohibited.

H.R. 3807: Predatory Mortgage Lending Practices Reduction Act

o Introduced February 27, 2002; Never passed by House or Senate; Never signed into law

o Please see H.R. 1163.

H.R. 3901: Anti-Predatory Lending Act of 2000 o Introduced March 9, 2000; Never passed by House or Senate; Never signed

into law o H.R. 3901 adds the following disclosure requirement to the Home Mortgage

Disclosure Act of 1975: “the annual percentage rate of mortgage loans and home improvement loans originated by the institution grouped according to census tract, income level, racial characteristics, and gender.” The bill restricts certain rates and fees and mandates that any borrower who would like to obtain a high-cost mortgage complete home ownership counseling. Pre-payment penalties, negative amortization, flipping home loans, extending credit without regard to ability to repay, encouraging default, payments to appraisers by creditors, and creditor-financing of credit insurance are disallowed.

H.R. 3915: Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act of 2007

o Introduced October 22, 2007; Passed by House November 15, 2007; Never passed by Senate; Never signed into law

o H.R. 3915 introduces licensing and training requirements for individuals wishing to become loan originators. In addition, the bill stipulates that certain federal agencies are to regulate mortgage lenders so that they do not encourage borrowers from taking on loans that they do not have the ability to repay. Good faith estimates must include the total loan amount, the type and length of the loan, the annual percentage rate, the total estimated monthly payment, the percentage the monthly payment is of the borrower’s monthly income, and other disclosures.

H.R. 4213: Consumer Mortgage Protection Act of 2000

60

o Introduced April 6, 2000; Never passed by House or Senate; Never signed into law

o The Consumer Mortgage Protection Act of 2000 revises regulations on fees, points, closing costs, annual percentage rates, and pre-payment penalties. Creditors are not to encourage consumers to default on loans and must report quarterly to credit bureaus on the status of consumer loans.

H.R. 4250: Predatory Lending Consumer Protection Act of 2000

o Introduced April 12, 2000; Never passed by House or Senate; Never signed into law

o H.R. 4250 requires additional disclosures to consumers who are applying for high-cost mortgages to warn them regarding the higher interest rates and the risks associated with high-cost mortgages. Pre-payment penalties, balloon payments, and the financing of points and fees are restricted. Creditors must evaluate each consumer’s ability to repay the loan, and creditors must not encourage a consumer to default on the loan.

H.R. 4471: Fair and Responsible Lending Act

o Introduced December 8, 2005; Never passed by House or Senate; Never signed into law

o H.R. 4471 regulates fees, payments, and other costs associated with high-cost home loans. The bill requires that a consumer considering a high-cost mortgage attend credit counseling services. Computer software programs designed to help consumers choose among mortgage products must be certified by the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

H.R. 4818: Mortgage Loan Consumer Protection Act

o Introduced May 22, 2002; Never passed by House or Senate; Never signed into law

o H.R. 4818 requires disclosure of lenders’ fees on settlement paperwork and prohibits lenders from charging certain loan fees.

H.R 833: Responsible Lending Act

o Introduced February 13, 2003; Never passed by House or Senate; Never signed into law

o See also H.R. 1295. H.R. 833 defines high cost mortgages, points, and fees. The bill also creates the Consumer Mortgage Protection Board to offer grants to organizations providing homeownership/rental counseling. Mortgage broker guidelines and requirements are also included in the bill.

S. 2415: Predatory Lending Consumer Protection Act of 2000

o Introduced April 12, 2000; Never passed by House or Senate; Never signed into law

o S. 2415 amends the Truth in Lending Act regarding annual percentage rates, total points and fees, pre-payment penalties, and balloon payments for high cost mortgages. The bill also requires additional consumer disclosures and

61

restricts high-cost mortgage creditors from financing mortgage points and fees and from accelerating a consumer’s debt or from encouraging consumer default. High-cost mortgage lenders must report their consumers’ payment histories to credit reporting agencies. Civil penalties and the statute of limitations are increased.

S. 2438: Predatory Lending Consumer Protection Act of 2002

o Introduced May 1, 2002; Never passed by House or Senate; Never signed into law

o S. 2438 amends the Truth in Lending Act regarding high cost mortgages; as such, the bill requires additional disclosures to the consumer, prohibits balloon payments and prepayment penalties, and limits the points/fees a lender may charge for high cost mortgages. Creditors must report a consumer’s payment history/status to consumer reporting agencies.

A second group of bills introduces lax restrictions for lenders in the general issue of Housing. In general, these bills use a wide array of tools including lower down-payment requirements; state and local grant funding to provide down-payment assistance for certain borrowers; hybrid adjustable rate mortgage programs; revised mortgage insurance premiums and cancellation policies; and financial assistance when purchasing homes in high-crime areas or low-income areas. Another channel through which these bills incorporate lax housing regulations is relaxing restrictions on Federal Housing Administration (FHA) loans and oversight of the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae), the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac), and the Federal Home Loan Banks. The following bulleted list offers greater detail on each of the bills in this category:

H.R. 1276: American Dream Downpayment Act o Introduced March 13, 2003; Passed by House October 1, 2003; Never passed

by Senate; Never signed into law o H.R. 1276 amends the Cranston-Gonzalez National Affordable Housing Act

and offers down-payment assistance to certain low-income individuals, first-time home buyers, uniformed employees, or teachers through the use of grants to state and local governments.

H.R. 1461: Federal Housing Finance Reform Act of 2005

o Introduced April 5, 2005; Passed by House October 26, 2005; Never passed by Senate; Never signed into law

o The Federal Housing Finance Reform Act of 2005 creates the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) which would have oversight of Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, and Federal Home Loan Banks. FHFA would become the single regulator for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae; the Department of Housing and Urban Development would no longer have oversight. The bill requires Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to set aside funds directed at increasing homeownership among low-income individuals or in low-income areas.

62

H.R. 1629: FHA Multifamily Housing Mortgage Loan Limit Adjustment Act of 2001

o Introduced April 26, 2001; Never passed by House or Senate; Never signed into law

o H.R. 1629 would increase the mortgage loan limits for multifamily housing mortgage insurance.

H.R. 176: FHA Single Family Loan Limit Adjustment Act of 2005

o Introduced January 4, 2005; Never passed by House or Senate; Never signed into law

o H.R. 176 increases the amount that can be insured under FHA mortgages in high-cost areas.

H.R. 1776: American Homeownership and Economic Opportunity Act of 2000

o Introduced May 12, 1999; Passed by House April 6, 2000; Never passed by Senate; Never signed into law

o H.R. 1776 makes grants available to states and local governments and requires any community development block grant applicant to make an honest effort to reduce barriers to homeownership. The bill extends loan terms for manufactured home lot purchases, lowers down-payment requirements for home purchases, and offers other forms of down-payment assistance for teachers and public safety officers. Hybrid adjustable rate mortgage programs and financial assistance when purchasing homes in high-crime areas are also included.

H.R. 2589: Mark-to-Market Extension Act of 2001

o Introduced July 23, 2001; Passed by House September 24, 2001; Never passed by Senate; Never signed into law

o H.R. 2589 revises Section 8 and other multifamily housing mortgage assistance programs. For example, vouchers, rent restructuring, “look-back” project eligibility, and housing insurance restructuring programs are included. The mark-to-market program is extended through 2006.

H.R. 3206: Home Ownership Expansion and Opportunities Act of 2001

o Introduced November 1, 2001; Never passed by House or Senate; Never signed into law

o H.R. 3206 permits the Government National Mortgage Association to guarantee securities through the use of certain conventional mortgages.

H.R. 3755: Zero Downpayment Act of 2004

o Introduced February 3, 2004; Never passed by House or Senate; Never signed into law

o H.R. 3755 would permit the Department of Housing and Urban Development to insure single family primary residences for first-time homebuyers who do not make a down-payment. Applicants must participate in mortgage counseling, and in certain circumstances, foreclosure prevention counseling.

63

No more than ten percent of the mortgages held by the Federal Housing Administration may qualify for this program.

H.R. 4110: FHA Single Family Loan Limit Adjustment Act of 2004

o Introduced April 1, 2004; Never passed by House or Senate; Never signed into law

o Please see H.R. 176

H.R. 5121: Expanding American Ownership Act of 2006 o Introduced April 6, 2006; Passed by House July 25, 2006; Never passed by

Senate; Never signed into law o H.R. 5121 raises the maximum insurable amount of a home to be equal to the

full median price of area homes. With regards to FHA mortgage loans, the bill extends the maximum length of the loan from 35 to 40 years and removes the requirement of a three percent down-payment. H.R. 5121 also revises the mortgage insurance premium structure.

H.R. 5503: FHA Multi Family Loan Limit Adjustment Act

o Introduced May 25, 2006; Passed by House September 27, 2006; Never passed by Senate; Never signed into law

o H.R. 5503 increases the FHA loan limits in high cost areas for the following types of housing: rental, cooperative, rehabilitation, neighborhood conservation, moderate income, displaced family, condominiums, and housing for the elderly.

H.R. 5640: American Homeownership and Economic Opportunity Act of 2000

o Introduced December 5, 2000; Passed by House December 5, 2000; Passed by Senate December 7, 2000; Signed into law December 27, 2000

o H.R. 5640 affords greater protection to consumers with regards to mortgage insurance cancellations and offers grants to provide downpayment assistance to Section 8 tenants. The bill addresses standards for manufactured homes and eliminates the National Manufactured Home Advisory Council. Programs and services related to rural housing and housing for the elderly or for disabled families are also included.

H.R. 811: American Dream Downpayment Act

o Introduced April 8, 2003; Passed by Senate November 24, 2003; Passed by House December 8, 2003; Signed into law December 16, 2003

o H.R. 811 amends the Cranston-Gonzalez National Affordable Housing Act and offers down-payment assistance to low-income, first-time home buyers through the use of grants to state and local governments. The bill revises certain criteria for hybrid adjustable rate mortgages and increases the loan limits for FHA multifamily loans.

S. 1163: FHA Multifamily Housing Mortgage Loan Limit Adjustment Act of

2001

64

o Introduced July 11, 2001; Never passed by House or Senate; Never signed into law

o S. 1163 increases mortgage loan limits for multifamily housing mortgage insurance.

S. 1620: Home Ownership Expansion Act of 2001

o Introduced November 1, 2001; Never passed by House or Senate; Never signed into law

o S. 1620 would permit the guaranteeing of conventional mortgage-backed securities.

S. 2169: PROMISE (Promoting Refinancing Opportunities for Mortgages

Impacted by the Subprime Emergency) Act of 2007 o Introduced October 16, 2007; Never passed by House or Senate; Never signed

into law o S. 2169 gives the Director of the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise

Oversight of the Department of Housing and Urban Development authority to suspend, modify or lift the limitation on growth provision in the Fannie Mae Consent Decree and the voluntary temporary growth limitation in the Freddie Mac Letter. The Director also is authorized to increase the mortgage portfolio limitations of both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by at least 10 percent. The bill then stipulates that 85 percent of this increase should be set aside for refinancing subprime mortgages that are at risk of foreclosure. The definition of subprime mortgages is at the discretion of the Director.

S. 3535: Expanding American Homeownership Act of 2006

o Introduced June 19, 2006; Never passed by House or Senate; Never signed into law

o See also H.R. 5121. S. 3535 introduces various changes to conforming loan limits, loan terms, cash investment requirements, mortgage insurance premiums, insurance for condominiums, and insurance for manufactured homes.

A third set of bills introduces tight regulations for lenders in areas not directly related to mortgages and are not included among the specific issues of interest.

Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) Enacted by Congress in 1975, the original purpose of the Act was two-fold: enhance enforcement of anti-discriminatory lending laws and disseminate information to guide investments in housing. The Act requires financial institutions to disclose information to their regulatory agency about every loan application received. Whether an institution is covered depends on its size, the extent of its activity in a metropolitan statistical area (MSA), and the weight of residential mortgage lending in its portfolio. Any depository institution with a home office or branch in an MSA must report HMDA data if it has made a home purchase loan on a one-to-four unit dwelling or has refinanced a home purchase loan and if it

65

has assets above an annually adjusted threshold. Any nondepository institution with at least ten percent of its loan portfolio composed of home purchase loans must also report HMDA data if it has assets exceeding $10 million. Under these criteria, small lenders and lenders with offices only in non-metropolitan areas are exempt from HMDA data reporting requirements. Therefore, information for rural areas tend to be incomplete. Yet, U.S. Census figures show that about 83 percent of the population lived in metropolitan areas over our sample period, and hence, the bulk of residential mortgage lending activity is likely to be reported under the HMDA. Information covers both individual characteristics (race, ethnicity, income, geographic location of the property, etc.), loan information (amount requested, response, reasons for denial, etc.) and institution information (regulatory authority, geographic location, and assets). The data can be ordered on CD-ROM’s from the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC), and starting in 2006 they can also be downloaded from their website. The data cover about 250 million loan applications between 1996 and 2007. In order to make sure that the data are clear of outliers and erroneous values, we follow these procedures: Loan amount and applicant income are rounded to a lower limit, hence all

observations below $1000 and $10000, respectively, are eliminated.

Definitions of applicant race, loan purpose and purchaser type have changed between 2003 and 2004. For applicant race, an applicant ethnicity variable has been added and the race code for Hispanic has been eliminated. Other codes have been rearranged. In our dataset, these variables are transformed into harmonized dummies for selected ethnicities. Loan purpose category “multifamily” has been moved to a new specific variable called property type in 2004. In order to harmonize the pre-2003 and post-2003 data, all multifamily-related records are eliminated. Purchaser type has gone under a minor recoding to make room for “securitization”, i.e. the packaging and sale of loans on the open market, as opposed to the sale of the whole loan to a private institution or government-sponsored enterprise. As we do not distinguish between loan sales and securitized loans, no adjustments are made for this change.

We eliminate all application records that did not end in one of the three following actions: loan originated, application approved but not accepted, application denied. Other actions mostly represent dubious statuses (e.g. application withdrawn by applicant) or purchased loans; these have also been excluded because it is not clear whether they are reported twice, once by the originating institution and again by the purchasing institution.

Although HMDA is a relatively homogeneous dataset considering its size, there are some inconsistencies that need to be dealt with. First, HMDA disclosure requirements change, although minimally, from one year to the next to reflect changes in metropolitan area definitions and keep minimum institution size in line with inflation. While there is little that can be done to take account of the fact that the set of institutions qualifying under the applicable rules on the size restriction change, we eliminate the observations that cannot be

66

associated with a metropolitan area, which typically turn out to be loans made in rural areas by institutions whose primary business is in metropolitan areas and are therefore required to report or loans that were made in an area that happened to be reclassified as rural. Second, 2004 was marked by a major overhaul of the HMDA regulations. New variables were added, including the interest rate when it is set above a certain threshold: the number of variables expanded from 30 to 45. Moreover, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) increased the number of official Metropolitan areas (MAs) from about 320 to about 390. The boundaries of the MAs themselves were sometimes enlarged, increasing the number of lenders required to report. Trends apparent from a comparison of aggregate figures from 2003 and 2004, therefore, should be taken with a grain of salt. For example, loan market growth rates are likely to be inflated because in the existing MAs more institutions were required to disclose; at the same time, in a specific MA figures could be understated because part of the counties that used to form it have been incorporated into a new MA. In such cases, 2004 aggregate figures have been interpolated using 2003 and 2005 figures. Third, some Loan Application Records (LARs) were found to be wrong or inconsistent by numerous data validity checks operated by the FFIEC. Such records, after being altered automatically, have been marked as “edited” using a flag. Around 6 percent of all records are marked as edited. Edits are distributed in a homogeneous fashion across time and across space. In any event, those records have been eliminated from our database.50 To concentrate on a relatively homogeneous set of loans, we drop loans for multi-family purpose from the sample, as this is a distinct market from the overall mortgage market for single family homes. We also drop federally insured loans as their risk profile is likely to differ from that of other loans. HMDA data does not include a field that identifies whether an individual loan application is a subprime loan application. In order to distinguish between the subprime and prime loans, we use the subprime lenders list as compiled by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) each year. HUD has annually identified a list of lenders who specialize in either subprime or manufactured home lending since 1993. HUD uses a number of HMDA indicators, such as origination rates, share of refinance loans, and proportion of loans sold to government-sponsored housing enterprises, to identify potential subprime lenders. Since 2004, lenders are required to identify loans for manufactured housing and loans in which the annual percentage rate (APR) on the loan exceeds the rate on the Treasury security of comparable maturity by at least three (five, for second-lien loans) percentage points and report this information under HMDA. The rate spread can be used as an alternative indicator (to the HUD list) to classify subprime loans. For the years with available data, the ranking of subprime lenders using the rate spread variable alone coincides closely with the ranking in the HUD list (the correlation is around 0.8).

50 An exception is Arizona in 2003. For most Arizona MAs in 2003 nearly all records are reported as edited. While the reasons of this remain unknown, such records have been eliminated, and 2003-04 credit growth rates have been interpolated using data from the adjacent years.

67

Data at the Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) Level Despite its broad coverage on borrower, property, and loan characteristics, several important variables that might have an impact on lending decisions are left out in HMDA. The lack of knowledge on the applicant’s credit score and age, interest rate and maturity of the loan, and property price are just examples of missing fundamental information on which the lender might base his the decision. Some of this essential information might be partially recovered through use of economic and social indicators available for the geographical area. For that purpose, we gather data from the following sources. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA): Annual data on personal income, labor and

capital remuneration, proprietors’ employment, and population.

Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS): Data on unemployment and prices

U.S. Census Bureau: Data on population

Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO): Housing price index (HPI)

LoanPerformance: Mortgage delinquencies (percent of subprime loans that are 60 or more days delayed in payment) from LoanPerformance at four different points in time (February 2005, 2006 and 2007 and November 2007).

Adjustment for Change in Metropolitan Area Definitions The definitions of MAs change across time, both because of changing administrative standards and, more often, because of the dynamic nature of cities. OMB operated a major change in the definitions in 2003, and HMDA incorporated this change into its requirements in 2004. Hence, it is necessary to adjust the aggregation of data to reflect these changes in definitions to make sure that data are consistent pre- and post-2004. Further harmonization of metropolitan area definitions is necessary as some sources use different codes. The new codes identify physical MAs as Core-Based Statistical Areas (CBSAs). A CBSA can span more than one state but always covers counties in their entirety without splitting them. Large areas such as New York-Newark-Bridgeport (NY-NJ-CT-PA) are in turn subdivided into Metropolitan Divisions (MDs) in order to maintain a more comparable area size. MDs, too, are made up of whole counties. The only exception to this rule is the New England City and Town Areas (NECTAs) used by BLS. Due to historical reasons, New England city boundaries are administratively allowed to cut across counties. It is therefore impossible to reconduce NECTA borders to CBSA and MD codes; while there are CBSA codes for Boston and other NECTAs, the Census Bureau warns that these codes represent statistical artifacts that do not match exactly the actual borders. For this reason, unemployment and inflation figures for NECTAs have been imputed without adjustment to the corresponding CBSAs (hence, at the highest level of aggregation to minimize errors). LoanPerformance data, excluding the November 2007 version, are expressed using the 1999 codes. At a first approximation, in the 1999 codebook CBSAs were replaced by Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Areas (CMSAs) and MDs were replaced by Primary Metropolitan

68

Statistical Areas (PMSAs). In order to fit PMSA-based data to our dataset, the data were merged to single counties according to their former PMSA; CBSA values were then calculated by averaging the value taken by each of the counties constituting the CBSA. This way it was possible to have a continuous and consistent series where one PMSA has been split into two CBSAs in the new codes, or vice versa. However, some of the seventy new MAs of the 2003 definition are new areas, that only recently reached the metropolitan area threshold, and therefore these areas have been excluded. HMDA data always report the county where the property is located, and therefore it was possible to associate the 2003 definitions with pre-2004 data. We recreated two artificial, coherent “CBSA” and “MD” variables for the individual data in all seven years. Of course, the pre-2004 coverage of MAs created in 2004 is not complete, as local institutions were deemed to be rural and therefore not required to file under HMDA. On the other hand, a large part of lending in non-metropolitan cities is still carried out by lenders that are required to file so we include these observations.

Matching Procedure

The matching of the lobbying and HMDA databases is a tedious task that needs to be done

manually using company names. We concentrate on the FIRE companies in the lobbying

database and perform a first stage of matching based on company names. Then, we go

through the unmatched companies filing lobbying expense reports one by one manually to

mark any mergers and acquisitions (or other events) that might have induced a name change.

Once we obtain a list of previous and current names for each company, we apply a second-

stage matching based on an algorithm that finds potential matches by searching for common

words in the name strings. After the algorithm narrows down the potential matches of

lobbying firms among the HMDA lenders, we go through the list one by one once again to

determine the right match.

In order to be able to capture the full extent of the lobbying activities carried out by an entity,

we meticulously examine the corporate structure of the firms that appear in the lobbying

database and that might be matched to particular HMDA lenders based on our algorithm.

This is because, in many cases, we encounter firms that are not exactly the same but are

linked in a corporate sense. Based on the affiliation between the lobbying company and the

matches, we enter the lobbying amounts under four different variables: amount spent by the

lender itself, amount spent by the lender’s parent company, amount spent by the lender’s

69

affiliates, and amount spent by the lender’s subsidiary. To illustrate with an example,

Countrywide Financial Corp is a bank-holding company that owns Countrywide Home

Loans, Inc., Countrywide Bank N.A., Countrywide Mortgage Ventures, LLC, and

Countrywide Real Estate Finance. Both Countrywide Financial Corp and Countrywide

Home Loans, Inc. report lobbying expenses and all subsidiaries of Countrywide Financial

Corp but not the bank-holding company itself, file HMDA information. In this case, we

enter the lobbying expense of Countrywide Financial Corp as that of the “parent” in our

merged database for all the subsidiaries. The amount spent by Countrywide Home Loans,

Inc. is recorded as the lender’s own lobbying expense (“self”) while the same amount is

entered as that of the “sister” for the other affiliates in the HMDA database. Although it is

not the case in this example, it is also possible that the firm filing the lobbying expense report

might be a subsidiary while the parent company does not appear in the lobbying database but

only in the HMDA database. Such cases are recorded in the form of a fourth variable,

lobbying expense of the “child”. If there are no parent companies or affiliates or subsidiaries

or the company itself does not appear in the lobbying database, the corresponding lobbying

variable is set to zero.

Table A1: List of Issues Code Issue ACC Accounting ADV Advertising AER Aerospace AGR Agriculture ALC Alcohol & Drug Abuse ANI Animals APP Apparel/Clothing Industry/Textiles ART Arts/Entertainment AUT Automotive Industry AVI Aviation/Aircraft/ Airlines BAN Banking BNK Bankruptcy BEV Beverage Industry BUD Budget/Appropriations CHM Chemicals/Chemical Industry CIV Civil Rights/Civil Liberties CAW Clean Air & Water (Quality) CDT Commodities (Big Ticket)

70

Table A1: List of Issues Code Issue COM Communications/ Broadcasting/ Radio/TV CPI Computer Industry CSP Consumer Issues/Safety/ Protection CON Constitution CPT Copyright/Patent/ Trademark DEF Defense DOC District of Columbia DIS Disaster Planning/Emergencies ECN Economics/Economic Development EDU Education ENG Energy/Nuclear ENV Environmental/Superfund FAM Family Issues/Abortion/ Adoption FIRE Firearms/Guns/ Ammunition FIN Financial Institutions/Investments/ Securities FOO Food Industry (Safety, Labeling, etc.) FOR Foreign Relations FUE Fuel/Gas/Oil GAM Gaming/Gambling/ Casino GOV Government Issues HCR Health Issues HOU Housing IMM Immigration IND Indian/Native American Affairs INS Insurance LBR Labor Issues/Antitrust/ Workplace LAW Law Enforcement/Crime/ Criminal Justice MAN Manufacturing MAR Marine/Maritime/ Boating/Fisheries MIA Media (Information/ Publishing) MED Medical/Disease Research/ Clinical Labs MMM Medicare/Medicaid MON Minting/Money/ Gold Standard NAT Natural Resources PHA Pharmacy POS Postal RRR Railroads RES Real Estate/Land Use/Conservation REL Religion RET Retirement ROD Roads/Highway SCI Science/Technology SMB Small Business SPO Sports/Athletics TAX Taxation/Internal Revenue Code TEC Telecommunications TOB Tobacco TOR Torts

71

Table A1: List of Issues Code Issue TRD Trade (Domestic & Foreign)

72

Table A2: Lobbying Report Filed by Bear Stearns

73

74

Table A3: Lobbying Report Filed by Bank of America

75

76

�

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

MSA-clusters

Drop outliers

Alternative measure of

lobbying expenditures

Scaled lobbying

expenditures

Lobbying expenditures

(including associations)

(Log lender lobbying expenditures on specific issues)t-1 0.002*** 0.002*** 0.008*** 0.002***[0.001] [0.001] [0.000] [0.001]

(Log lender lobbying expenditures on specific issues -- alternative measure)t-1 0.005***[0.001]

[Log (lender lobbying expenditures on specific issues/assets)]t-1

Log (assets of lender) 0.006*** 0.004*** 0.006*** 0.006*** 0.006***[0.001] [0.000] [0.000] [0.000] [0.000]

Market share of lender in MSA 3.017*** 2.032*** 3.011*** 3.018*** 3.017***[0.111] [0.069] [0.090] [0.090] [0.090]

Log (income of applicants of loans originated by lender) -0.031*** -0.014*** -0.031*** -0.031*** -0.031***[0.002] [0.001] [0.001] [0.001] [0.001]

Number of observations 406,035 399,984 406,035 406,035 406,035

MSA fixed effects Yes Yes Yes Yes YesYear fixed effects Yes Yes Yes Yes YesLender fixed effects Yes Yes Yes Yes YesMSA*year fixed effects Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Lobbying on specific issues refers to lobbying on bills and regulations related to mortgage lending (such as consumer protection laws) and securitization. In column [2], we drop the top and bottom first percentile of loan-to-income ratio and lobbying expenditures. In column [3], lobbying expenditures on specific issues is estimated by splitting total lobbying expenditures among various issues using share of lobbying reports noting the specific issues as weights. Column [5] uses an alternative measure of lobbying expenditures which includes expenditures by associations to which the lenders are associated. The lobbying expenditure of associations is split among the members in accordance with the size of the lenders. See text for details. Standard errors denoted in parentheses are clustered at the MSA-level in column [1] and lender-MSA level in columns [2]-[5]. ***, ** and * represent statistical significance at 1, 5 and 10 percent, respectively.

Table A4. Effect of Lobbying on Loan-to-Income Ratio: Additional Robustness Checks

Dependent variable: Loan-to-income ratio at (lender, MSA, year) level